A graduate of the Massachusetts Nautical School and Northeastern University Law School who served with the U.S. Navy during World War II, Alfred Mehegan forged a career and family life, notwithstanding the disadvantages of strife and neglect in childhood, and lifelong struggles with depression and alcohol. The gracefully written, deeply reflective story is told against the background of Boston in the early and mid-20th century, the American carnival, the U.S. Merchant Marine and U.S. Navy, Boston Irish immigration and Catholic cultural life, the Great Depression, World War II, the Greatest Generation; and the age of the Postwar Baby Boom. More than a simple chronicle, the story explores high hopes and bad luck, differences of values and dreams between parents and sons, and ponders why "one person can escape the barbed hooks of family pathology, while another cannot."