Description

All Souls is the written equivalent of an Irish wake, where revelers dance and sing the dead person s praises. In that same style, the book leavens tragedy with dashes of humor but preserves the heartbreaking details. –The New York Times Book Review

A 25th anniversary edition of the National Bestselling memoir, with a new afterword from Michael Patrick MacDonald, takes us deep into the South Boston housing projects during one of the city s most tumultuous times in history and tells the story of his family struggling the overcome the poverty, crime, addiction, and incarceration that overtook the neighborhood. A breakaway bestseller since its first printing, All Souls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald s Southie, the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger s crime schemes and busing riots, MacDonald s Southie is populated by sharply hewn characters. We meet Ma, Michael s mini-skirted, accordian-playing, single mother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children. And there are Michael s older siblings Davey, sweet artist-dreamer; Kevin, child genius of scam; and Frankie, Golden Gloves boxer and neighborhood hero whose lives are high-wire acts played out in a world of poverty and pride. Nearly suffocated by his grief and his community s code of silence, MacDonald tells his family story here with gritty but moving honesty. All Souls is heartbreaking testimony to lives lost too early, and the story of how a place so filled with pain could still be the best place in the world.