No Man's Land - by Simon Tolkien (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Through divergent experiences of working-class poverty, country house privilege, and the trenches of WWI, a boy comes of age in a rapidly changing world in an epic novel by the author of The Palace at the End of the Sea and The Room of Lost Steps.

London 1910. Adam Raine is a boy cursed by misfortune. Following his mother's tragic death, he moves north to Scarsdale, a hard-living coal-mining town, where his father finds work as a union organizer. But soon escalating tensions between the miners and their employer, Sir John Scarsdale, explode with terrible consequences. In the aftermath, Adam is taken into the Scarsdale family home, where Sir John's son Brice is his rival for the love of the parson's beautiful daughter. As Brice plots Adam's downfall, the country teeters on the edge of a war that will change everyone's lives forever.

From the gruelling workhouses of London to the suffocating Yorkshire mines, from the privilege and repression of an Edwardian country estate to the explosive trenches on the Western Front, Adam's journey from boy to man unfolds against the backdrop of a society violently entering the modern world.

No Man's Land is an epic coming-of-age novel about overcoming adversity through the power of love, hope, friendship, and an unyielding refusal to surrender.

Revised edition: This edition of No Man's Land includes editorial revisions.

Review Quotes

"A barn burner of a novel...A haunting fictionalization of a pivotal episode in a hellish war." --Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post

"No Man's Land is a page-turner, an opera, a costume drama to binge-watch. Simon Tolkien knows how to keep a story moving, and he does it well." --NPR

"Rends the heart and sears the soul...a splendid novel that exemplifies historical fiction at its descriptive, disturbing, addictive, and engaging best." --Richmond Times-Dispatch

"An epic coming-of-age story...thoroughly enjoyable." --Shelf Awareness

"Vivid set pieces, notably a wonderful section down a mine, while Adam is an intriguing central character: clever, sincere, and, amid the turbulence of early twentieth-century England, a determined survivor." --Daily Mail

"[Tolkien's] most ambitious work yet...Adam makes an attractive hero and his story has more than enough colour and energy to keep us reading." --The Sunday Times (London)

"In this emotionally charged novel, Tolkien brings to the fore the social injustice, poverty, and attrition of war in early twentieth-century England. The scenes underground in the mines of Scarsdale are every bit as shocking as the harrowing descriptions of trench warfare when Adam and his comrades are repeatedly sent over the top." --Sunday Express

"Visceral...an unforgettable paean and a gripping war story." --Booklist (starred review)