Midlife Irish: Discovering My Family and Myself

If Bill Bryson set off for Ireland to discover his roots, then you'd have MIDLIFE IRISH--an illuminating, entertaining, and heartwarming look at one man's search for where--and who--he came from. Irish-American. What does this vague term really mean? Millions of people describe themselves as Irish-American, but beyond celebrating St. Patrick's Day with a drunken zeal, how many of them know really anything about their cultural ancestry? It is this curiosity that got the better of Frank Gannon--the son of a couple of straight-off-the-boat Irish immigrants. His mother and father, who never spoke about life on the Emerald Isle, raised him in New Jersey, thousands of miles from Ireland. But after both his parents passed away, he realized he knew nothing about whom they really were and where they came from--and in effect, where he came from. Now at the half-way point in his life, Gannon decided to fill in the blanks. He embarked on a journey to Planet Green and slowly pieced together the lives of his parents. Before long, he discovered much about his mother and father, and just as much about himself. At times funny, poignant, and heartbreaking, MIDLIFE IRISH draws on the universal themes of love, loss, and laughter that have kept the Irish both miserable and happy--often at the same time--throughout the years. This story of one man's search for his cultural identity will have phones ringing off the hook at the Irish Board of Tourism, as readers will want to take off