Dirtbag, Massachusetts

* THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * * WINNER OF THE 2022 NEW ENGLAND BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION * 'A heart on the sleeve, demons in check, eyes unblinking, unbearably sad, laugh-out-loud funny revelation' MARLON JAMES Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents’ lives – or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humour, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald’s memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his