Formative Years

Brian Thomas Isaac’s Bones of a Giant takes place during the summer of 1968 in Salmon Valley, British Columbia. It follows sixteen-year-old Lewis Toma and his mother, Grace, who are both reeling from the disappearance of Lewis’s older brother, Eddie. Readers of Isaac’s award-winning debut, All the Quiet Places, will recognize Eddie as that novel’s protagonist, who, in the aftermath of his girlfriend’s death, runs away in the final pages. Now Isaac resumes the story, shifting his focus to those the troubled boy left behind.

Money continues to be tight for the Toma family, but Grace is determined to finish the renovations on their home. With little financial help from the Indian agent, she decides to find work in the United States, leaving Lewis to live down the road with his Uncle Ned and cousins for a few months. Here Lewis can escape his past — his missing brother, the ramshackle state of his farm — and embrace modernity, where everything is “neat...