The Shoebox Bible

Alan Bradley

Nov 2014 · Sold by Doubleday Canada

About this ebook

On a cold, dark winter day during the Second World War, a young Alan Bradley found hidden beneath a floorboard in his mother’s bedroom closet a well-worn cardboard shoebox.

At the time, he could make little sense of the ragtag things he found inside: cigarette packages, soup can labels, handbills, calendars, paper bags, pie boxes—any scrap of paper upon which his mother could copy out, in her old-fashioned handwriting, what seemed to be no more than unrelated snippets of Scripture.

He only knew that the box, which he would later come to think of as the Shoebox Bible, had something to do with the fact that his father had run away from home.

Many years would pass, and his mother would be on her deathbed before he would once again hold this treasure in his hands. And only then would he put together the pieces of the puzzle, and learn the complete truth.

Beautifully and lovingly told, The Shoebox Bible is a wonderful memoir of a precocious family who manage to live and love despite the absence of their father.

Interspersed with heartbreaking quotations from the Old and New Testaments, this sad, funny, and above all inspiring story will appeal to readers who fell in love with such inspirational books as Tuesdays with Morrie and Mister God, This Is Anna.

Ratings and reviews

Very relatable. Worth reading.

Good

About the author

Alan Bradley is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven Flavia de Luce mystery novels and the memoir The Shoebox bible. His first Flavia novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. His other Flavia de Luce novels are The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Speaking from Among the Bones, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d, The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place, and The Golden Tresses of the Dead, as well as the ebook short story “The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse.” Originally from Toronto, he now lives and writes on an island in the middle of the Irish Sea.