A Long Stone's Throw

This book is a nomadic adventure worthy of Ulysses. Sensitive, lyrical, funny, stubborn, impetuous, McCourt writes with a steady hand, a joyful heart, and an Irishman's sense of life's absurdities. (Publishers Weekly)

This memoir begins between the borders of Canada and the United States where, due to a technical hitch in immigration law, Alphie finds himself shanghaied in no man's land. This was not the first, or the last, time Alphie will be on unsteady ground. Alphie McCourt was born in Limerick, Ireland, where his father's departure left misery behind for the family. Alphie's loneliness only grew deeper and wider as each of his older brothers (Frank, Malachy and Michael) left for America; so in 1959, Alphie followed them. Alphie's adolescence in New York was marked by aimlessness and too much to drink. Briefly returning to Ireland to study law, he returned to America only three years later, where he settled in California and discovered marijuana and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Returning to his immigrant roots in New York City, Alphie re-encounters the beautiful Upper East Side Lynn, marrying her in 1975, in a raucous ceremony attended by both priest and rabbi. Success followed by hardship in business ventures color several of the following years. Then, one night, on Route 80 in New Jersey, drunk, full of despair and driving through the snow, Alphie has an epiphany. Today Alphie rises in the morning, at time when he used to go to bed. With the New York City dawn still lingering, he monitors the Empire State Building, in all its moods and colors and knows he has finally landed on firm ground. He is home.