The O'Connell Boy: Educating 'The Wolf Child' An Irish-American Memoir

The O'Connell Educating 'The Wolf Child' is a vivid memoir that tells of the author's Irish-American youth in a group foster home operated by a ferociously strict "lace curtain" perfectionist Irish widow. After nine years of "incarceration" in the group home, he becomes a fanatic about his own personal freedom as he spends his free-wheeling high school years with his lackadaisical Irish granny "on the other side of the tracks" in the blighted part of town. With wit and irony, O'Connell uses candid dialogue and descriptions to tell his unusual story of group foster home life and his later "battle of wits" with his aging grandmother. The memoir delivers a trip back in time, touches on an orphan's feelings of abandonment, and provides scenes of "growing up" that range from the outrageous to the sublime.