The Family Made of Dust: A Novel of Loss and Rebirth in the Australian Outback

WINNER OF TWO NATIONAL LITERARY AWARDS

TOP SELECTION FOR A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

"One of the best novels in ten years." Hackney Literary Awards Committee

Destined to become the next The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

For fans of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, Atonement by Ian McEwan, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

In this thrilling debut novel ranked alongside Pulitzer Prize winners William Styron and Horton Foote, a gripping search for a missing friend unearths the price one boy paid for brutal adoption policies.

Gabriel Branch is a man displaced. Having lost his boyhood family to a government’s attempt at genocide, his emotions balance on a razor's edge. Then his best friend disappears in the vast Australian desert. The only clue is an Aboriginal artifact that leads Gabe back to the land of his birth.

As he searches for his friend, long-suppressed memories resurface. Memories of the uncle who swung him up into a tree and called him Little Breeze. Memories of the mother he lost. Memories of the candy the social workers used to lure him away from his Outback home.

Vast, dangerous and beautiful, The Family Made of Dust is a remarkable story about the special relationships families can treasure even when they have been broken apart...and how a spare and beautiful landscape can resurrect that which we hold so dear.

Comparable titles: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Laine Cunningham’s books are included in the fantastic fiction found on “books to read” and “good books to read” lists curated on online book review sites. Bookworms have compared her stories to bestselling books that garner recommended reading notes by bookstore employees. Browse the full selection of her fiction and nonfiction titles at Amazon books, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent bookstore.