Frogs for Watchdogs

In the Irish countryside in 1988, a little boy wild, vulnerable but loved moves into a house with his magical mother and his older sister, B. Though they are homeless, his mother is making ends meet with her special gift for homeopathic cures and the little boy is on guard against the darkness at the edges of their lives. A local man, Jerry Drain, is stealing the hay from the barn out back and, the boy assumes, is probably the same man making nasty phone calls to the house at night. While B is away at boarding school, Jerry is around more and more, and the small and tight family the boy has always known begins to expand before his very eyes. When he discovers a magic power of his own the stories he writes come true the boy decides to use his lethal imagination to write Jerry out of the picture. It will be a year of major wins and baffling defeats for the boy, as Jerry Drains true nature insists on revealing itself. Dark, funny, tender and raw, Frogs for Watchdogs thrums with the intensity of childhood and a new, extraordinary literary talent. It is a love letter to the bewildering joy and wary safety of blended families and the profound bonds of love they can create.