A quintessentially Irish debut, told in the unique voice of a wild boy with a ferocious imagination who will stop at nothing to protect his family from the darkness on the edges of their unstable rural life.

After years of moving from place to place, a young family finds shelter in an isolated house in the Irish

countryside. Their father is missing, Mum is a healer and B a formidable big sister. In his strange new territory, a wild little boy gives voice to his experience.

Jerry Drain, a local famer, is stealing hay from the barn, someone is making nasty phone calls to the house at night and darkness is gathering at the edges of their lives. With his murderous imagination the boy will do everything in his power to protect his family. But Jerry will not go away and Mum seems to be falling under his spell. It will be a year of major wins and baffling defeats for the boy, as Jerry’s true nature insists on revealing itself.

Dark, funny, tender and raw, Frogs for Watchdogs thrums with the intensity and newness of childhood. Above all, it is an ode to the blended family: its bewildering joy, wary safety and profound new bonds of love.