The Grave is a novel by author James Heneghan

James Heneghan

James Heneghan is a British Canadian author. Heneghan grew up Liverpool, England, and currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. He earned Canadian citizenship in 1963...

.

The setting moves between 1970s Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

 and 1840s Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

: a young boy named Thomas Mullen is abandoned in a Liverpool toy store. When he is found, he's put in the foster care

Foster care

Foster care is the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward is placed in the private home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent"....

 system, or Social Services, the "SS," which Thomas compares to the Nazi SS

Schutzstaffel

The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

. He moves from home to home.

One day, Thomas discovers a mass grave

Mass grave

A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...

 at a construction site near his school. He enters the site, and is taken back to 1847 Ireland at the height of the Potato Famine

Potato famine

Potato famine may refer to:* Great Famine , the famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1852* Highland Potato Famine, a major agrarian crisis in the Scottish Highlands from 1846 to 1857...

. The Monaghan family, who take him in, consists of Tully, Hannah, Brendan, Maggie, and Thaddius Monaghan. Thomas soon discovers that he would rather stay with the Monaghan family than go back to his alternate life. He does not know what to do about this, especially because of his foster "friend", Brian, who is slow and depends on Thomas for protection and support in everything.

Awards

• Winner of the Sheila A. Egoff B.C. Book Prize for Children's Literature, 2001
• Winner of Mr. Christie's Book Award Silver Seal, 2000
• Nominated for the Geoffrey Bilson Award
  Geoffrey Bilson Award
  The Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young Readers is a Canadian literary award that goes to the best work of historical fiction written for youth each year...
  
    for Historical Fiction.
• Nominated for the Keystone State (Pennsylvania) Reading Association Young Adult Book Award, 2001-2002
• Nominated for the Manitoba
  Manitoba
  Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
  
   Young Readers' Choice Award, 2002
• Nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile Crime Fiction, 2001