All Souls: A Family Story from Southie - Hardcover

MacDonald, Michael Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316855693 ISBN 13: 9780316855693

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2000

Synopsis

A breakaway best seller 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 like his Ma, a mini-skirted, accordion-playing single mother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children. Nearly suffocated by his grief and his community's code of silence, MacDonald tells his family story here with gritty but moving honesty.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in "the best place in the world"--the Old Colony projects of South Boston--where 85% of the residents collect welfare in an area with the highest concentration of impoverished whites in the U.S. In All Souls, MacDonald takes us deep into the secret heart of Southie. With radiant insight, he opens up a contradictory world, where residents are besieged by gangs and crime but refuse to admit any problems, remaining fiercely loyal to their community. MacDonald also introduces us to the unforgettable people who inhabit this proud neighborhood. We meet his mother, Ma MacDonald, an accordion-playing, spiked-heel-wearing, indomitable mother to all; Whitey Bulger, the lord of Southie, gangster and father figure, protector and punisher; and Michael's beloved siblings, nearly half of whom were lost forever to drugs, murder, or suicide. By turns explosive and touching, All Souls ultimately shares a powerful message of hope, renewal, and redemption.

From the Back Cover:

"If you were charmed by Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes . . . try All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald's guileless and powerful memoir."
--Time

"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

"SEARING POWER . . . [MACDONALD'S] SWIFT, CONVERSATIONAL STYLE SWEEPS YOU INTO HIS ANGER AND SORROW."
--USA Today

"A DEEPLY AMERICAN STORY . . . BUT WHAT IT SHARES WITH ANGELA'S ASHES IS A SENSE OF INSPIRATION. From terrible times came two good men, both gifted in storytelling."
--Chicago Sun-Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0316855693
• ISBN 13: 9780316855693
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 267