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This is the story of my Irish-American family from the period of the Great Depression to the Eisenhower years. The struggles of the family were marked by a string of calamities and opportunities that may seem unlikely, but they marked our experience and shaped us all:¿My grandfather's total disinheritance in 1900 plunged my father and his brothers into poverty for most of his youth.¿The early death of my mother's father in 1913 sent her family into poverty when she was nine. The youngest of her three brothers was still in the womb.¿A special act of charity toward an ailing aunt unexpectedly helped the family buy the house on 7 Webster Place in 1930.¿My mother's dream gave my father the winning numbers he played on his way to work, saving the family home from foreclosure in 1933.¿My mother's youngest brother botched a bank robbery and found himself in the army in 1942.¿My father's rescuing an abandoned aunt with Alzheimer's disease proved one of the most painful experiences of the middle 1940s.¿My father's alcoholic brother broke in one night and threatened us with murder.¿A daring Christmas Eve burglary while the family slept completely shocked our sense of security in 1948.¿With one grandmother in bed with cancer and the other grandmother in bed with a stroke, our house became a hospice until 1949.¿My beautiful sister suffered an unhappy childhood and, after jilting her wartime sweetheart, married the wrong man and made her life difficult and painful.¿White Flight in 1952 ended our years on Webster Place and began a series of moves that reduced the circumstances of my parents but gave them some security in their old age.The story of my Irish-American family living in East Orange, New Jersey, covers a period of great political and social change. 7 Webster Place housed ten people in 1935 when I was born. I thought of myself as an only child, as did my older sister. We became aware of our conundrum only when we were much older and all the people of our youth were gone.

The year is 1825, and a young, ambitious Englishman has arrived in burgeoning New York City, at the auspicious moment of the opening of Erie Canal. Thomas Cole is an artist, with skills he spent years mastering. In a nation of immigrants and upstarts, his challenge is to navigate through a complex, tight-knit community of emerging artists, hide-bound critics and wealthy patrons, searching for ways to support his dream. There are other obstacles, as well: a new nation still tied to Old World values; a dependent father's failing business ventures; and his own recurring periods of faltering self-confidence, loneliness and melancholy.In this work of historical fiction, the author reads 'between the lines' of Cole's many journals, letters and essays, to reanimate the essence of the man, his motivation, inspiration and travels, given the harsh realities of city and country life in the early 19th century. In a more contemporary context, the author explores the same Hudson River valleys, towns and surrounding mountains that Cole would have known. The region's timeless allure for both travelers-stories separated by nearly two centuries-offer new perspectives on the life and times of the "Father of the Hudson River School" of painting; and that of a fellow, modern sojourner, drawn as Cole was, to the splendor of America's 'first' river.