A continuation of the best-selling All Souls, the author's powerful memoir of growing up poor in Boston's Irish-American ghetto, describes his first forays outside of Southie's Old Colony housing project, the role of punk music in changing his life, his alienation, his traumatic breakdown, and his two healing journeys to Ireland. 50,000 first printing.MacDonald's first book told of the loss of the author's four siblings to the violence, poverty, and gangsterism of Boston's Irish-American ghetto. The question "How did you get out?" has haunted him ever since. This narrative of reinvention begins with the young MacDonald's first forays outside the soul-crushing walls of Southie's Old Colony housing project. In greater Boston and eventually New York's East Village, he becomes part of the club scene, providing a 1980s social history and a powerful glimpseof what punk music was for him: a lifesaving form of subversion and self-education. Yet family tragedies eventually draw him home again, to a devastating breakdown induced by trauma and guilt. He meets his father for the first time, as a corpse. Finally,two trips to Ireland, the first as an alienated young man, the second with his extraordinary "Ma," are healing journeys unlike any other in Irish-American literature.--From publisher description.A continuation of the author's memoir of growing up poor in Boston's Irish-American ghetto describes his first forays outside of Southie's Old Colony housing project, his traumatic breakdown, and his two healing journeys to Ireland.
