The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald 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...

“Whether you grew up in South Boston, Belfast, Brooklyn, or somewhere else entirely, you'll recognize something familiar in his search for identity, purpose, belonging, and home.”—Ken Casey of The Dropkick Murphys, from the forewordIn All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald chronicled a heartbreaking saga of familial loss amid Irish South Boston's culture of silence. In Easter Rising, he tells the story of how he managed to survive it.As the ...

“Whether you grew up in South Boston, Belfast, Brooklyn, or somewhere else entirely, you'll recognize something familiar in his search for identity, purpose, belonging, and home.”—Ken Casey of The Dropkick Murphys, from the forewordIn All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald chronicled a heartbreaking saga of familial loss amid Irish South Boston's culture of silence. In Easter Rising, he tells the story of how he managed to survive it.As the ...

The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald 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...