Books make wonderful presents.

Books for birthdays. More books for Christmas. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Farmer Gary and I take it to the extreme, with books for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter … you get the picture.

Around our house, most books are one-and-done. Upon completion, the volume goes back on the shelf or, occasionally, into the donation basket.

But once in a while, there’s something about a book that is almost haunting. A single reading is not enough.

And so it was with Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. This Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir was under every family member’s Christmas tree in 1996. Mom saw to that. She was deeply taken with not only the story Frank McCourt told of his impoverished childhood, but how he told the story. The voice is his own, that of the spirited young lad.

Somehow, from one page to the next, I remember wiping away a tear and then laughing out loud. An example of holy laughter, yes, but a small miracle to experience this through a child’s voice.

Malachy and Angela McCourt were Irish immigrants who tried to make a go of it in New York City. But it was the start of the Depression and even when Malachy was able to get work, he drank his wages, leaving Angela and the young children to starve.

Angela’s mother sent money for them to return to Limerick, but her generosity stopped there. The growing family moved from one slum to another, while Malachy’s alcoholism continued to deny the children their basic needs.

I’ll leave the rest of the story for you to uncover. The brutal treatment of the McCourt children by priests, nuns, teachers, and social workers is inconceivable. Their near miraculous way of rising above the horror with laughter, and the hope of someday returning to America is astounding.

Ever since I retired nearly five years ago, I’ve wanted to re-read Angela’s Ashes. But with Mom’s passing just five months later, I’ve had to leave it on the bookshelf. The combination of the sad story, knowing how Mom loved Frank McCourt, and ongoing grief with Dad’s death just 17 months after hers, my heart was too fragile.

There’s another part to the story: A person I considered a friend lost my copy. Books are replaceable, yes, but this one was a Christmas gift from my parents, with a heartfelt inscription written inside the front cover. This person more or less shrugged it off and eventually slid a paperback copy into inter-office mail.

Of course, I mentioned the loss to my parents, and framed my disappointment as the loss of a treasured gift.

Years later, another birthday, another book.

It was Angela’s Ashes. Their copy. Signed by himself, Frank McCourt. They’d met him during a book signing at their local bookstore on September 10, 1996. My first reaction was to return it, knowing how much they’d enjoyed meeting the author and hearing him read excerpts from his memoir.

But they insisted I keep it, so I came up with the next best thing. I brought the book with me the next time I visited and asked for the more important signatures: theirs.

They took a bit of time deciding what to include in their inscriptions and sent the book back to me with the usual accoutrements – three articles about the book Mom had clipped from The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, People, a bookmark, and even a local notice about the Frank McCourt 1996 book signing there in Madison, Connecticut.

When I took Angela’s Ashes off the Irish-authors shelf in my study, determined to finally re-read it during the month of March, two other bits of paper caught my eye.

It seems I wasn’t meant to make it through March without a good cry. “Your bladder is too close to your eyes,” Frank McCourt would have told me.

Here’s Mom’s message:

And Dad’s note:

I finished rereading Angela’s Ashes on Monday. It turns out that was also the day Frank’s final surviving sibling, Malachy, left this life. Also an author, as well as actor, pub owner, and raconteur, his books total ten.

We’ve already got a few of Malachy’s books, but not all, so I placed an order this morning.

After all, Saint Patrick’s Day is coming up soon.

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