In an episodic novel, Barry Gifford lays bare his young heart, exploring the hopes and disappointments of his childhood and adolescence. He recounts his travels with his mother, spent considering the intersection of the landscape and their lives, and an ailing gangster father, who influences his son's life through his absence. Memories From a Sinking Ship conjures an era - the late 1940s through to the early 1960s - and places - Chicago, the Florida Keys, New Orleans - to which one can never return.