Michael MacDonald writes a gripping memoir about his life growing up in the Old Colony housing projects in South Boston, a predominantly white Irish Catholic neighborhood. He writes about the crime, drugs and violence in his neighborhood in the years following Boston's busing riots, and of his brothers and sisters, many of whom fell prey to drugs, crime, and suicide. The book also introduces his mother, Helen King, a feisty …show more content…
Like Kathy, Michael’s sister, many women there have had a fight over drugs with their boyfriend. From the stories that actually hit the papers, I can say that a large amount dies from the argument and those who don’t are usually ignored by the police about the assault or corruption leads the abusive man to go free. Michael also mentions another woman abused by her boyfriend in the book, who was Karen, Kathy’s nurse when she was in a coma. Karen was strangled by her boyfriend Timmy Baldwin – and no one will ever really know why, because the man was not charged and justice was never served. Kathy’s boyfriend was treated equally by the judicial system, and didn’t go to jail. However, he was murdered by Mark Espy a few years later in front of a local pub with two hundred people as witnesses – and no one said a word. Surprisingly, he too was murdered decades later, and to no one’s surprise, not a soul