In A Brookline Boyhood Jim Harnedy takes up a new challenge in his writing career and instead of producing a local history he narrates a lively tale of growing up in the 1930s and 40s in Brookline, a suburb to the southeast of Boston. Jim's grandfather came from Bantry, County Cork, Ireland, and Jim begins his story with the Harnedy clan Saturday night tradition of having dinner at Grandma's house. From here he takes us to the fire at Brookline High School and the hurricane of 1938; all memories from an impressionable young mind. Emergency surgery for a Maine Coon kitten is another memory fragment followed by recalling hearing Franklin D. Roosevelt on the radio following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Growing up in the 1940s meant the Lone Ranger, Silver and Tonto at the movie theater and listening to radio stars while sat before a winter fire. For anyone of sufficient years to remember such nuggets, this book will produce evocative memories; for those of much younger years, Jim's boyhood tale of growing up in Brookline will provide a fascinating window into a Boston Irish family of eighty years ago.