All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonaldBy Micheal Patrick MacDonald. (Ballentine Books under The Random House Publishing Corporation, 1999, 266 pp. $14.00) Michael Patrick MacDonald saw the hatred come alive one Friday in early October. Some people read newspapers in well-lit kitchens. Some children colored with brightly colored crayons. Some fathers got into their cars in front of their beautiful homes. But there were no pastels, bright kitchens or fathers in nice cars on Dorchester Street in Southie that day. Only the cruelest manifestation of blind hatred. Michael Patrick MacDonald was an innocent child when he stood just steps away from a black man being literally killed by his body, one kick, one punch, one stone at a time. “I remember that man's tears erasing the paths in the blood on his face.” Michael Patrick MacDonald lived a scary life. Turning the book over and reading the back, one might imagine a decidedly idyllic existence. Sometimes scary, sometimes gorgeous, but always full of love. But to open this book is to open the door to Southie's ugly truth, to MacDonald's ugly truth, to welcome it for all it's worth, to draw our own conclusions. One boy's hell is another boy's playground. But MacDonald is a palm tree in a hurricane, bending and swaying in the fierce winds of Southie's interior, even as things fly overhead, she crouches to protect her children, to keep them out of harm's way. We grew up watching Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow and Peanuts. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up watching violence, sadness and death. MacDonald remembers Southie much as an adult might describe his abusive father. He... middle of paper... is emerging into the light of day. Michael Patrick MacDonald wants to share his Southie with us. Right or wrong, partial or objective, it was his life. He lived it, he survived it, and he decided to win it back for the greater good of all the residents of every Old Colony Project, for all the Daveys and Ma MacDonalds, for every child who cries at night about things... the child shouldn't never cry. Fiction is subject to structured criticism. But this is someone's life. Balanced or not, this is what happened. The conclusions do not change the outcome. Comprehensive coverage of the topic won't bring Frankie back. Stereotypical criticism won't change the fact that Moe Duggan stabbed his two sons. This book is not a book at all. It's a door. A door to a life. A life we ​​can live together with the MacDonald clan, in the safety of our warm, cozy, cockroach-free living rooms.