Frank McCourt · 1996 · exile

Frank McCourt's 1996 memoir. Born in Depression-era Brooklyn to poor Irish immigrants, young Frank is taken back across the Atlantic when the family's American dream collapses, to the damp lanes and lethal poverty of Limerick. Through hunger, his father's drinking and the deaths of siblings, he dreams of returning to America - and at nineteen boards a ship back to New York.

1. 1
   Brooklyn

   Where Frank is born to Irish immigrant parents during the Depression; when his baby sister dies and the family's American life falls apart, they scrape together the fare home to Ireland.

2. 2
   Limerick

   The damp, poverty-stricken lanes where Frank grows up - his father drinking the wages, siblings dying, the family on charity - and where he dreams only of earning his way back to America.

3. 3
   New York

   At nineteen, having saved for his passage, Frank sails back across the Atlantic to the America of his birth and the promise it still holds for him.