The Metal Shredders

"This is a great book, and a rare kind of novel because it’s about a scrap metal family. It’s about John Bonner & Son Metal Shredders, a family scrap business not unlike the one I grew up in, and the complicated dynamics that often exist in these kinds of families. There are often tensions, and what Nancy Zafris describes could well have been my family. There are succession issues, issues of having a lot of cash in the business and where that cash goes, issues with customers you’ve known all your life who might have started out with you as junk peddlers but you got bigger – these are all very literary themes, and she does a wonderful job of describing what the Bonner family is about. One of the interesting things about the scrap business is that it’s an outsider business. Nobody aspires to be a junk peddler, to pick junk off the street. So at the early stages at least, it tends to attract outsiders, immigrants, the illiterate. For the ones who then become succesful, that creates all kinds of interesting and sometimes troubling clashes, because when outsiders in any industry become successful they find themselves struggling against the idea that they are part of a mainstream successful business. They try to stay true to their roots. The Metal Shredders really draws out that dynamic, and that’s one of the reasons I love the book so much. It’s a beautiful novel, and brings home so many themes that those of us who grew up in the industry know so well."