Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Bookreporter.com - Author Profile: Frank Mccourt


July 1999.

That summer was blistering hot and full of anticipation. Waiting for my beautiful son to arrive into our arms from Korea.

I had just finished up working full time in a children's Day Treatment program. I wanted the summer to "nest"...

to prepare for my son's arrival.

I spent the past two years of my social work career, day after day, listening to the stories of children.

Suffering.

And when permitted the children would allow me to enter their world and join them on their healing journey.

This work provided the daily miracles that can so easily be missed in any other setting.

Kids laugh, they pull pranks, they love to open gifts, they are still just kids in spite of the worst that humanity can toss at them.

Not even three weeks out from this counseling job, I picked up Angela's Ashes.

I don't know why... I just did.

In Frank McCourt's book, I found comfort. I found that optimism grows like a lotus flower out of the mud. I found the voice of an angel in the poverty stricken dirty streets of Limerick. I found the voices of all those kids who spilled their secrets behind my closed office door... lightening their load while I tried my best to make their world better... one kid at a time.

Frank McCourt is a ruddy angel with an acerbic wit and a gift for seeing things as they truly are.

I love ruddy angels.

This is a book that needs to be on everyone's to read list.

Yes, it is that good.


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Heaven has itself a ruddy angel... Frank McCourt died today, July 19, 2009. Thank you, Mr. McCourt for sharing your life and your wisdom, you will truly be missed.

NEWS REPORT: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8158451.stm

BOOK SUMMARY: Bookreporter.com - ANGELA'S ASHES by Frank McCourt

READING GUIDE: Reading Group Guide ANGELA'S ASHES by Frank McCourt

FILM: Angela's Ashes (1999)