Beyond Forgetting You

This family saga takes place in Ireland and
New York City in the second half of the
nineteenth century. It begins in 1849 when
a thirteen-year-old boy, through a cruel twist
of fate, lands at the tip of the island at Castle
Garden. Frightened and alone, James Barry
simply walks off the ship onto the citys
congested streets and begins his adventure.
For the next fourteen years he works on the
docks and lives in the Bowery until, so disgusted
by the draft riots, he signs up on a clipper
and spends the next two years on the open seas.
He winds up back in Ireland and meets and
marries a girl from his own village. After three
children and a futile attempt at farming land
he knew he could never own he heads back
to post Civil War America.

Beyond Forgetting You is a personal account
of how James family co-existed with their
neighbors in a Westside tenement in lower
Manhattan. The story is simultaneously told
through his youngest daughters journals.
Bridget optimistically describes her life and
her familys plight to become middle-class.
She tells the intricacies of inner-city living
and gives a realistic look at social problems and
how the lower class dealt with events, politics,
ideas and uptown opulence. Manhattan was
then much as it is today, a very overcrowded and
exciting city where the family constantly
struggled to survive while never losing their
simple pleasure in being alive.