Coming-of-age memoir depicts the struggles of the son of an Irish immigrant growing up in an all-Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx before and during 1960s. Tommy must wrestle with family dysfunction while in the streets he must navigate a world where being a goy (gentile) confers a hurtful outsider status on him. He struggles not to surrender to the pull of drug addiction while fighting to break free and flee the Bronx for good.