A Song for Mary Counter Display (Paperback)

Dennis Smith grew up Irish, Catholic and poor -- and it wasn't until decades later that he fully realized how those ingredients shaped his character, feeding his demons even as they provided the means to overcome them. Using a first-person, present-tense voice to create immediacy, Smith takes us back to his days as a "tenement kid", where he competed with an older, "golden-boy" brother for attention, tangled with crotchety nuns, prowled New York's East Side, and lusted after a succession of comely female classmates. Dennis' family was dirt-poor -- held together by their mother Mary, who was determined to see her two sons tread the "right" path. Missing from their day-to-day lives was Dennis' father, said by Mary to have a disability which required him to stay in a "hospital" and have no visitors. By his early teens, Dennis had rebelled against all forms of authority, turning increasingly to drugs, alcohol and hooliganism. Just as it seemed his life was about to spin out of control, his mother revealed the full truth of his father's circumstances, and the process of healing commenced.

A richly textured portrait of the Irish immigrant experience, this lyrical memoir mixes humor, poignancy and strong sympathy for its narrator to show a young man battling for his place in the world.