It is 1945 in Long Beach, New York, when three-year-old Brian Farley receives the scare of a lifetime. As little Brian bounces on his father's stomach in a second-floor bedroom of their summer house, his father suddenly loses his grip, sending Brian out through the screen window and onto the sand below. As the summer house, normally a place of peace and respite, disrupts into chaos, little Brian has no idea that this particular event is just one of many escapades he will experience growing up as an Irish Catholic boy in Brooklyn and Long Beach ... In this compelling story, as a Brooklyn boy matures into adulthood amid a warm, loving, and sometimes conflicted New York family, he soon discovers he is responsible for his own happiness. -- back cover.
