His mother died at the age of 33, when he was just four years old. This eloquent testimony to one fractured family's capacity to prevail and to the heroic roles enacted by Sean's father and their housekeeper unfolds with an understated dignity. Acute loss and vivid recall yield wry and poignant truths. Dunne's disarmingly simple prose examines social history in an Irish-housing estate with its tragedies and resilience and his rigid and suffocating education at a Christian Brothers School, through the sharp and piercing lens of personal experience. Told with honesty, humor, and love, it endures as the record of a spiritual odyssey and growth.