I met Brian Conaghan a few years ago at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  I was chairing a panel event he was part of.  We hit it off quite well and I did an in conversation event with him the following year when we discussed The Bombs That Brought Us Together.

Charlie lives in Little Town.  He’s always lived there; he knows how things work.  It’s home.  Pavel is from Old Country but it doesn’t feel like home to him so he migrates to Little Town where he meets Charlie.  Against all odds (and all reason) they become friends.  But then the bombs start to fall and the rules of Little Town change.  Suddenly Charlie is not so sure it feels like home.

In preparation for the event I made notes.  One of the things I wrote down was that I felt that by the end of the book that it was hard to know who were the heroes and who the villains.  When is a terrorist not a terrorist?  And even if you’ve committed a crime, do you deserve to be treated fairly?  All of these are questions you will ponder when you read Brian’s thought-provoking and engaging book.

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