The Homecoming Seasons

James P. MacGuire

doi:10.5771/9780761873310

Summary

The Homecoming Seasons: An Irish Catholic Returns to a Changing Long Island is a deeply moving memoir of a returning native's re-experience of his childhood community. After many years abroad as a graduate student at Cambridge, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, and as a country program director of health care and agricultural programs in central Africa, James MacGuire returned to New York and spent most of the 1980s at Time Inc., Macmillan and the Manhattan Institute.

In 1990 he married and several years later, with a second child on the way, he and his wife decamped from Manhattan for a small enclave called the Isle of Wight in the village of Lawrence on the south shore of Long Island, where MacGuire had grown up.

This book tells the story of MacGuire’s return to this world—how it had evolved from ancient times; been inhabited by indigenous peoples; colonized by the Dutch and English; and then grew from a sparsely populated agricultural corner of western Long Island to an early summer resort, then an outer, and, finally, an inner suburb of New York City.

Jamie MacGuire skillfully weaves memories of his childhood in this almost hidden world with sketches of his family and their friends before updating his account with a lovingly detailed, diary-like depiction of returning. His parents’ friends now much older, the community more diverse, as he, his wife and children make new friends as they proceed into this changed world. He captures in cinematic detail the wonder of the wetlands and surrounding natural world, the poignant life, death and rebirth of community, the joys and sorrows of marriage and parenthood, and the profound exultation of safely shepherding two beloved sons to triumphant adulthood.

This is an uplifting literary memoir that will earn and deserve the widest possible audience.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-0-7618-7330-3
ISBN-Online: 978-0-7618-7331-0
Publisher: Hamilton Books, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 258
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Author’s Note No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 4
The Isle of Wight No access Pages 5 - 10
1. 1. First Christmas No access
2. 1. Winter No access
  2. Spring No access
  3. Summer No access
  4. Fall Arrives No access
3. 1. The Ghosts of Lawrence No access
4. 1997 No access
Looking Back at the Sixties No access Pages 49 - 62
1. 1998 No access
2. 1999 No access
3. 2000 No access
1. 2001 No access
2. 2002 No access
3. 2003 No access
4. 2004 No access
1. 2005 No access
2. 1. 1. William T. Ketcham, Jr. (1919–2006) No access
  2. September No access
  3. Mid-December No access
3. 1. Spring No access
  2. Summer No access
  3. November No access
4. 1. Summer No access
1. 1. William C. MacMillen Jr. No access
  2. Racquet and Tennis Club, January 14, 2009 No access
  3. August No access
  4. End of Summer No access
2. 1. Spring No access
3. 1. Barbara MacMillen (1913–2010) No access
  2. Rockaway Hunting Club, January 8, 2011 No access
  3. October 15, Dario’s Party No access
  4. Art Nicol: No access
1. 1. STORM / SURGE: A Sandy Diary No access
2. 2013 No access
3. 1. June No access
1. 1. Winter No access
  2. Spring No access
  3. Summer No access
  4. July No access
2. 1. February No access
  2. March No access
  3. Eulogy for Lanie by Pierce No access
  4. Eulogy for Lanie by Rhoads No access
1. September No access
2. 2016 No access
1. The Wedding No access
1. 2017 No access
2. 2018 No access
3. 2019 No access
Envoi No access Pages 247 - 250
Index No access Pages 251 - 256
About the Author No access Pages 257 - 258