“In navigating such turbulent emotional waters, Hamilton proves himself yet again a writer able to touch thousands of hearts as he delves deep into his own.” — USA Today
From the author of The Speckled People, one of the most lyrical and affecting memoirs of recent times, comes a powerful, deeply moving, and well-observed account of a young man's determined struggles to place himself in a world of his own making.
As a boy, Hugo Hamilton felt a strong desire to be rid of the confused identity he had inherited from his German mother and Irish father. Yet history's determined grip tightened its hold. A job at the harbor, rather than offering him respite, entangled him in a bitter feud between two fishermen—one Catholic, one Protestant. Against the background of the spiraling Troubles in the North, Hugo listened to the missing persons bulletins going out on the radio for his German cousin who mysteriously vanished somewhere on the west coast of Ireland and watched as the unfolding harbor duel moved toward a tragic end.
The Harbor Boys brilliantly charts a young man as he battles his emotional inheritance and struggles to forge an identity of his own.