WINNER OF TWO NATIONAL LITERARY AWARDS. TOP SELECTION FOR A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. "One of the best novels in ten years." Hackney Literary Awards. Destined to become the next The Book Thief. For fans of Small Great Things, Before We Were Yours, and Orphan Train, and viewers of "Mystery Road," "Picnic at Hanging Rock," and "Bite Club." In this thrilling debut novel ranked alongside Pulitzer Prize winners William Styron and Horton Foote, a gripping search for a missing friend unearths the price one boy paid for brutal adoption policies. Gabriel Branch is a man displaced. Having lost his boyhood family to a government's attempt at genocide, his emotions balance on a razor's edge. Then his best friend disappears in the vast Australian desert. The only clue is an Aboriginal artifact that leads Gabe back to the land of his birth. As he searches for his friend, long-suppressed memories resurface. Memories of the uncle who swung him up into a tree and called him Little Breeze. Memories of the mother he lost. Memories of the candy the social workers used to lure him away from his Outback home. Vast, dangerous and beautiful, The Family Made of Dust is a remarkable story about the special relationships families can treasure even when they have been broken apart...and how a spare and beautiful landscape can resurrect that which we hold so dear. Comps: If I Stay by Gayle Forman, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Atonement by Ian McEwan, Two By Two by Nicholas Sparks, Home by Harlan Coben, Cross the Line by James Patterson, Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, and Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly. Cunningham's books are included in the "books to read" lists on online book review sites, and are compared to bestselling books that garner recommended reading notes.