The Good Thief: A Novel

Hannah Tinti's 2008 debut novel, The Good Thief, is the story of Ren, a one-handed orphan, and his life after being adopted by a pair of thieves in late-19th-century New England. The novel deals with themes of loss and redemption and explores the world of 19th-century medicine. The narrative moves quickly from a Catholic orphanage named after the patron saint of lost things, Saint Anthony, to an impoverished mining town, with stops at moonlit cemeteries and an enormous mousetrap factory. With characters as fantastic as its setting, The Good Thief takes readers on a memorable Gothic adventure.

The novel begins at Saint Anthony's, a Catholic monastery turned vineyard and orphanage to win the approval of local Protestants. The Catholic monks who run Saint Anthony's use corporal punishment on the orphan boys to instill Catholic penitence in them. Ren, an orphan who arrived with his name hand-stitched /into the collar of his nightshirt, arrived at Saint Anthony's as an infant. Like all the boys at Saint Anthony's, Ren hopes to be adopted by one of the men who come by, looking for boys to use as farmworkers or raise as sons. Unlike the other orphans, though, Ren is "missing a hand" (9). Ren has no memory of how he lost it, though he has a scar where the skin was "pulled neatly over the bone and sewn crookedly in the shape of a V" (9). Ren's missing hand keeps him from being adopted.

One day, a young-looking man with blonde hair and glasses arrives. His name is Benjamin Nab, and he claims to be Ren's long-lost older brother. Father John, the man who runs Saint Anthony's, invites Benjamin and Ren into his office, where Benjamin explains how Ren came to arrive at Saint Anthony's. Benjamin says Native Americans murdered their parents, so he gave baby Ren to "a wagon full of people returning east" (33) and then took ten years to track down their parents' murderers. Benjamin presents "two strips of hair" (34), which he claims are their parents' scalps, to Father John as evidence. Father John, impressed, believes Benjamin and sends Ren home with him.

Ren soon learns that Benjamin is not his brother. Rather, Benjamin is a confidence man, adept at manipulating people to his own advantage. On their first night together, Benjamin uses Ren's missing hand to gain a farmer's sympathy. The famer lets them stay in his barn, only to have Benjamin steal his horse and wagon. Benjamin and Ren meet up with Tom, Benjamin's longtime accomplice, a former schoolteacher and current drunk. Ren soon learns that Benjamin and Tom are "resurrection men" (81), who exhume freshly-buried bodies to both sell to medical schools and pillage of jewelry and teeth. Disgusted, Ren believes Benjamin and Tom will surely be punished by God. However, weighing his prospects, Ren decides to stay on with Benjamin and Tom.

The three end up in North Umbrage, a town where "all the men were buried" (102) beneath the earth in a mining accident. A large mousetrap factory, owned by Silas McGinty, employs a group of young girls, all dressed in identical navy-blue dresses. Benjamin and Tom have heard about a local doctor in need of bodies for research and they hope to dig up and sell him some bodies. Benjamin, Tom, and Ren arrive at a boarding house owned by Mrs. Sands, a nearly-deaf woman who has a gruff-though-caring manner. The next day, Benjamin sends Ren to the teaching hospital to meet Dr. Milton, the man to whom they'll be selling the bodies. Milton, a man with a "hungry" (130) expression who is fascinated with amputation, gives Ren keys to the hospital's basement and instructions to come once a week with four bodies, "no more than a day or two gone" (134).

That night, Ren keeps watch while Benjamin and Tom dig up four bodies. One of the bodies, however, belongs to a man who was buried prematurely. This man, a giant and assassin-for-hire named Dolly, returns to the boarding house with the men. While Benjamin and Tom drop off the three dead bodies with Dr. Milton, Ren stays with Dolly and the two forge an unlikely bond. On the group's next run to the cemetery, they are stopped by a group of men in the road. These men, McGinty's henchmen, or “hat boys,” stop Benjamin and the others. A fight ensues, and the hat boys bring the group to McGinty's factory.

At the factory, the hat boys reveal Benjamin Nab has a large bounty on his head. McGinty, however, lets everyone but Ren leave. McGinty reveals that he is Ren's uncle. His sister, Ren's mother, Margaret, never revealed Ren's father's name to McGinty, which drove him mad. McGinty, who reveals that he cut off Ren's hand as an infant to try to get Margaret to talk, keeps Ren hostage in a windowless closet. With the help of Jenny, one of the mousetrap girls, Ren escapes. However, McGinty's hat boys catch him and bring him back to the factory.

In a tense scene, Ren spins a tale about his father based on the stories he heard Benjamin and others tell earlier in the novel. At the end, Ren names his father as "Benjamin Nab" (303). Benjamin, whom McGinty has held captive, confesses that he is Ren's father; then, before McGinty can kill him, Benjamin asks McGinty to sign his will as a witness. After getting the signature, again with the help of Jenny, Benjamin kills McGinty. Benjamin and Ren escape the factory "as the room tumbled into confusion" (310). Benjamin tells Ren he has to "disappear for a time" (312),which upsets Ren, but in losing his biological father, Ren gains an adoptive family. Back at Mrs. Sands' boarding house, Tom, Brom and Ichy, Ren's friends from the orphanage, greet Ren. Tom reads Benjamin's will and finds it's actually a new will for McGinty, which Benjamin knew he would "not read […] before signing" (320). In this new will, McGinty nullifies his previous will and leaves his factory to Ren.