Other editions of book The Grave

Thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen has spent his entire life in foster homes. One night, while visiting a recently discovered mass grave at the local cemetery, he falls through a hole in time and finds himself in 1847 Ireland. Taken in by the first caring family he has ever known, Tom must find a way to help them survive the famine and disease that grips their country.

Pulled into the past to discover his futureAbandoned in a shopping mall when he was a baby, thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen has no family - he's spent his life shuffled from one rotten foster home to another. When he hears rumors that a mass grave has been unearthed on his school grounds, he feels himself inexplicably drawn to it, and then down into its terrible darkness and beyond. He discovers that he is no longer in Liverpool in 1974 but in Ireland in 1847, the height of the potato famine. A family named Monaghan takes him in, and Tom experiences for the first time what its like to have parents and siblings who cleave to one another even amid terrible hardship. But why has Tom been transported across time and place? And why must the grave keep yanking him back, at intervals, to his dreary, lonely existence in Liverpool? Most of all, what does it mean that the Monaghan's son Tully is practically Toms double? Tom stands by the Monaghan's in their plight, and in so doing discovers that the past, and the Monaghans, hold the key to his destiny.

Thirteen-year-old Tom, an unhappy foster child in Liverpool, falls into a massive open grave and is transported to Ireland in 1847 in the middle of the deadly potato famine. Thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen has always been alone, moving about from one disastrous foster home situation to another. He has never known the true meaning of family love. When he hears that a mass grave has been unearthed on his school grounds, he feels drawn to the grave, pulled toward it, but can’t explain why. I sucked in a deep breath to try and calm my bursting chest. The smell from the open grave wasn’t bad the way you’d expect from so many dead people. . . . But it wasn’t the smell that got to me, it was the feeling that something in the black pit was calling and reaching out to me, pulling me, that same urge again, the one I’d been getting for the past couple of days, but stronger now and more powerful. It terrified me, if you really want to know the truth.The truth is Tom’s life is about to change forever.

SOMETHING IN THE BLACK PIT WAS CALLING AND REACHING OUT TO ME, PULLING ME...Tom stumbles into a pit in an excavated schoolyard and finds himself mysteriously transported back to rural Ireland in the grip of the potato famine of the 1840s. A foster child with no family in his 'real' life in 1970s Liverpool, in Ireland he finds himself taken in by a generous, though desperately poor, family whose eldest son is Tom's spitting image. Tom's intriguing life develops in parallel in both settings, creating an engrossing and affecting story for readers of 11+.

Pulled into the past to discover his futureAbandoned in a shopping mall when he was a baby, thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen has no family - he's spent his life shuffled from one rotten foster home to another. When he hears rumors that a mass grave has been unearthed on his school grounds, he feels himself inexplicably drawn to it, and then down into its terrible darkness and beyond. He discovers that he is no longer in Liverpool in 1974 but in Ireland in 1847, the height of the potato famine. A family named Monaghan takes him in, and Tom experiences for the first time what its like to have parents and siblings who cleave to one another even amid terrible hardship. But why has Tom been transported across time and place? And why must the grave keep yanking him back, at intervals, to his dreary, lonely existence in Liverpool? Most of all, what does it mean that the Monaghan's son Tully is practically Toms double? Tom stands by the Monaghan's in their plight, and in so doing discovers that the past, and the Monaghans, hold the key to his destiny.

SOMETHING IN THE BLACK PIT WAS CALLING AND REACHING OUT TO ME, PULLING ME...Tom stumbles into a pit in an excavated schoolyard and finds himself mysteriously transported back to rural Ireland in the grip of the potato famine of the 1840s. A foster child with no family in his 'real' life in 1970s Liverpool, in Ireland he finds himself taken in by a generous, though desperately poor, family whose eldest son is Tom's spitting image.Tom's intriguing life develops in parallel in both settings, creating an engrossing and affecting story for readers of 11+.