The Bridge

by Jane Higgins

Overview

The City is divided. The bridges gated. In Southside, the hostiles live in squalor and desperation, waiting for a chance to overrun the residents of Cityside.
 
Nik is still in high school but is destined for a great career with the Internal Security and Intelligence Services, the brains behind the war. But when ISIS comes recruiting, everyone is shocked when he isn't chosen. There must be an explanation, but no one will talk about it. Then the school is bombed and the hostiles take the bridges. Buildings are burning, kids are dead, and the hostiles have kidnapped Sol. Now ISIS is hunting for Nik.
 
But Nik is on the run, with Sol's sister Fyffe and ISIS hot on their trail. They cross the bridge in search of Sol, and Nik finds answers to questions he had never dared to ask.
 
The Bridge is a gritty adventure set in a future world where fear of outsiders pervades everything. A heart-stopping novel about friendship, identity, and courage from an exciting new voice in young-adult fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770494374
Publisher:	Tundra
Publication date:	10/09/2012
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 8.42(h) x 0.59(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Jane Higgins was born in New Zealand. She has degrees in mathematics and anthropology and has worked on many human rights campaigns. She is a senior research fellow at Lincoln University and her specialty is youth studies. Jane lives in Christchurch. The Bridge is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

This grim first novel, set on a not-so-distant future Earth in a war-torn, divided city that could be Sarajevo, London, or just about any other metropolis, packs a significant emotional wallop. Nikolai Stais, an orphan, has spent most of his life as a scholarship student at Tornmoor Academy, a prestigious military school designed to produce top security officers. But while Nikolai’s senior class peers are snapped up by the Internal Security and Intelligence Services, he is denied cadet status. Soon after, rebels attack the school, and Nikolai is arrested as a traitor, though he quickly escapes. When a younger friend is kidnapped and taken across the river to rebel territory, Nikolai follows, hoping to save him, and instead discovers that the history he’s been taught may not be the entire truth. Higgins works hard to expose the religious and racial bigotry lurking behind so many military conflicts, and she is adept at showing that, frequently, neither side is without blame. Nikolai is well drawn and believable, though the story’s secondary characters, particularly the villains, are comparatively one-dimensional. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

War propels a boy from the privileged side of town across the bridge to the enemy, where he learns the real causes of the war and about his own history .... A suspenseful and entertaining debut.” - Kirkus Reviews


“This grim first novel, set on a not-so-distant future Earth .... packs a significant emotional wallop .... Higgins works hard to expose the religious and racial bigotry lurking behind so many military conflicts, and she is adept at showing that, frequently, neither side is without blame.” - Publishers Weekly


“.... Readers will easily see themselves in Nik, a young man unsure of his place and uncertain of who is in the right. The popularity of dystopias will ensure that this story has appeal, and it will also make readers think.” - School Library Journal


“.... truly an engrossing and compelling story .... Higgins’ depiction of a world gone mad on war and drunk on power and fear is on par with the best that dystopian literature has to offer .... The Bridge surpasses its contemporaries as it delves into areas rarely explored so convincingly by others in the genre ....” - CM Magazine

From the Publisher

War propels a boy from the privileged side of town across the bridge to the enemy, where he learns the real causes of the war and about his own history. Seventeen-year-old Nik knows only that his parents were killed in an uprising and that he wants to join ISIS, the government security organization most responsible for his city's defense against their enemies from the poor side of the river. Although he attends on a scholarship, he's the most brilliant student in the posh school from which ISIS gets their recruits. When ISIS doesn't choose him, offering no explanation, he sees no future for himself—until a bomb destroys the school and forces Nik and his wealthy friends directly into the war. The enemy kidnaps Sol, the 8-year-old brother of Nik's wealthy friend, so he and Fyffe, Sol's sister, head over the bridge to rescue him. There, they can't avoid teaming up with the enemy, and Nik learns the real causes of the conflict. When the Southsiders discover Nik's real identity, however, he becomes the target of both sides. Higgins taps into current social and class conflicts as fodder for her future war. Nik remarks, "while I wasn't the only brown face in school, I was the only one without back-up." The Southsiders, it turns out, comprise the underclass that rebelled against their wealthy patrons, contrary to the propaganda that Nik has heard all his life. A suspenseful and entertaining debut. (Dystopian adventure. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews