It is 1945 in Long Beach, New York, when three-year-old Brian Farley receives the scare of a lifetime. As little Brian bounces on his father's stomach in a second-floor bedroom of their summer house, his father suddenly loses his grip, sending Brian out through the screen window and onto the sand below. As the summer house, normally a place of peace and respite, disrupts into chaos, little Brian has no idea that this particular event is just one of the many escapades he will experience growing up as an Irish Catholic boy in Brooklyn and Long Beach. Brian embarks on a memorable coming-of-age journey as the Farleys spend their winters in a borough that's undergoing many changes-the influx of Puerto Ricans, neighborhood deterioration, and the desertion of the Brooklyn Dodgers-and their summers in paradise at their grandparents' summer home. As Brian matures and falls in love with a beautiful, Puerto Rican classmate, only time will tell if their relationship will survive his mother's judgment and the shifting demographics of Brooklyn. But it is only after the family matriarch suddenly dies that everything Brian has ever known suddenly changes. In this compelling story, as a Brooklyn boy matures into adulthood amid a warm, loving, and sometimes conflicted New York family, he soon discovers he is responsible for his own happiness.