Scrapper

Kelly scavenges for scrap metal in the hundred thousand abandoned buildings at the heart of Detroit, an area known as "the zone," where one day he finds something far more valuable than the copper he’s come to steal: a kidnapped boy handcuffed to a bed, crying out for rescue. After being celebrated as a hero, Kelly secretly decides to avenge the boy’s unsolved kidnapping. This task will take him deeper into the zone, and into a confrontation with his own past, unearthing long-buried cycles of trauma and cruelty, memories made as dangerous as the evils that he pursues.

"Matt Bell’s new novel Scrapper envisions a world as grim and primed for post mortem as any sci-fi dystopia...one of the most unflinchingly real and devastatingly disconcerting narratives of a hero’s acclaim imaginable ... a punishingly effective and brutally affecting novel." Paste

"A tale of hard emotions in a hard environment...Bell poses difficult, elemental questions about right and wrong and of what constitutes morality in a place where the usual rules don’t always apply. And, refreshingly, the answers his protagonist arrives at are neither easy nor expected." Library Journal (Starred Review)

"Like the very best novels, Matt Bell's dark and suspenseful Scrapper works on so many levels that it's difficult to describe in just a few words, but what I can tell you is that it's ultimately about love and death, and that people will still be reading it when all of America, not just Detroit, is crumbling under the weight of its mistakes." Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time

"A fearless and harrowing meditation on the ruination and transformation of cities and of people; but amid loss and destruction, Bell finds a strain of piercing hope. This is an extraordinary book." Emily St. John Mandel, New York Times Bestselling author of Station Eleven

"This haunting story is juxtaposed with Bell’s fierce lyricism, creating a stirring and noir-ish novel that reflects on the nature of emptiness, ruin and renewal." A Detroit Free Press Best Book of 2015

For fans of The Dog Stars and Station Eleven, Scrapper traces one man's desperate quest for redemption in a devastated Detroit.
"Has the feel of Cormac McCarthy's The Road set in present-day Motor City... powerful."
--Publishers Weekly
Detroit has descended into ruin. Kelly scavenges for scrap metal from the hundred thousand abandoned buildings in a part of the city known as "the zone," an increasingly wild landscape where one day he finds something far more valuable than the copper he's come to steal: a kidnapped boy, crying out for rescue. Briefly celebrated as a hero, Kelly secretly avenges the boy's unsolved kidnapping, a task that will take him deeper into the zone and into a confrontation with his own past and long-buried traumas.
The second novel from the acclaimed author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, Scrapper is a devastating reimagining of one of America's greatest cities, its beautiful architecture, its lost houses, shuttered factories, boxing gyms, and storefront churches. With precise, powerful prose, it asks: What do we owe for our crimes, even those we've committed to protect the people we love?

Matt Bell is the author of the novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, a Michigan Notable Book, and an Indies Choice Adult Debut Book of the Year Honor Recipient, as well as the winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award. His stories have appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, The American Reader, and many other publications. Born in Michigan, he now teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.