First published 1984
Francis Phelan walks through Calvary Cemetery in Albany, digging graves for pocket money and talking to the corpses of people he once knew. The former baseball player has spent decades running from his past, drinking his way through flophouses and rail yards. Now he's back in his hometown with Helen, his companion in vagrancy, trying to survive another brutal winter. Francis carries the weight of the dead with him. There's his infant son, dropped and killed years ago in a moment of clumsiness that destroyed his marriage. There are the men who died because of his choices, their voices following him through the streets. As he moves between the cemetery, the mission, and the bars of his old neighborhood, Francis confronts the family he abandoned and the life he threw away. The ghosts demand recognition. His estranged wife and surviving children represent a world he can barely remember belonging to. Between the pull of redemption and the comfort of oblivion, Francis must decide whether he can stop running from what he's done.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: redemption, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Albany, Calvary Cemetery
Period: 20th-century
240 pages · Library Binding · Turtleback Books: A Division of Sanval
Content warnings: alcohol-abuse, death