Based on a real-life school explosion near Bilbao that killed 50 children in 1980, THE CHILD follows one family --- parents, grandparents, and the lost boy of the novel’s title --- through the long, painful arc of grief. Fernando Aramburu’s gift lies in his ability to portray ordinary people with extraordinary humanity: small gestures, fleeting thoughts, contradictory impulses, the quiet heroism of resilience. The grandfather who refuses to believe the boy is gone; the parents determined to “be strong;” the town that both remembers and forgets --- each is rendered with exacting truth and tenderness in careful, and caring, prose.