[About HBS]

[Search] [Business Books] [Scholarly Books] [Bargains] [Events] [Contact Us] [Home]


Photo © Annie Donovan

Michael Patrick
McDonald


All Souls

September 16, 1999
The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick McDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly gifted observer he was even as a child: "[as if] we were protected, as if the whole neighborhood was watching our backs for threats, watching for all the enemies we could never really define."

But the threats - poverty, drugs, a shadowy gangster world - were real. McDonald lost four of his siblings to violence and poverty. All Souls is heart-breaking testimony to lives lost too early, and the story of how a place so filled with pain could still be "the best place in the world".

The neighborhood's collapse is echoed by the MacDonald family's tragedies. All but destroyed by grief and by the Southie code that doesn't allow him to feel it, MacDonald gets out. His work as a peace activist, first in the all-black neighborhoods of nearby Roxbury, then back to the Southie he can't help but love, is the powerfully redemptive close to a story that will leave readers utterly shaken and changed.

Michael Patrick McDonald helped launch Boston's successful gun-buyback program and is founder of the South Boston Vigil Group. He lives in South Boston.

Order All Souls!

Back to the Events Page

[Search] [Business Books] [Scholarly Books] [Bargains] [Events] [Contact Us] [Home]

Copyright 1999 Harvard Book Store      Phone: 800-542-READ FAX: 617-497-1158