A Song for Mary : An Irish-American Memory Author: Dennis Smith
	Book Information Publisher: Warner Books Book Type: Paperback Rating: 2 ISBN-13: 9780446675680 - ISBN-10: 0446675687 Publication Date: 3/1/2000 Pages: 384

In the spirit of Pete Hamil's SNOW IN AUGUST, the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including REPORT FROM ENGINE COMPANY 82, creates a moving memoir of growing up Irish Catholic and poor in New York City.

Growing up on the rough-and-tumble streets of New York City in the 1940s and '50s, Dennis Smith was a "tenement kid," dirt-poor, Irish-Catholic, and missing a father. According to his mother, who fought desperately to keep her children on the right track, his father had a disability which required him to stay in a hospital and have no visitors. By his early teens, Smith had become an angry rebel, and was involved with drugs, alcohol, and various kinds of criminal mischief. Just as his life was about to spin out of control, he learned the truth behind his father's absence, and begun a difficult process of personal healing and spiritual renewal. Told in first-person narrative, this lyrical remembrance is a powerful odyssey of one young man coming of age in a confusing and sometimes hostile world.