All Souls A Family Story From Southie

“I was a bad guy but I wasn’t evil.”

–Richard Marinick

From the way recent movies and books have chronicled South Boston, best known as Southie, it might seem every one from there is a criminal. But that’s a bad rap on both Southie and the dandier Boston area of which it is a part. The blue collar towns around Boston, places like Somerville, Chelsea, Medford, Revere and Brockton, are not all when it comes to drugs and gangs, mean streets, codes of silence, triple deckers, Triple O’s and Castle Island. For each ex-con turned litterateur, there is a Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of the acclaimed and uplifting “All Souls: A Family Story from Southie.”

It probably started in 1972 with the late George V. Higgins’s “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” later made into a 1973 crime film starring Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle. Reeking with realism, this one broke the ground for those that followed–The “Digger’s Game (1973) Cogan’s Trade (1974) A City on a Hill (1975) The Judgment of Deke Hunter (1976).”

Years later, Dennis Lehane raised Boston noir to another level with his “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone,” both made into successful films. This was gritty local fare that resonated with those who likewise enjoyed reading when it comes to the Irish crooks of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Lehane turbo charged the popularity of Boston crime for whatsoever reasons.

“Prince of Thieves,” by the gifted Chuck Logan, is when it comes to Charlestown, an another ethnic, blue-collar Boston-Irish neighborhood renown as the breeding ground of bank robbers and armored car thieves. Still another sad and dark novel of desperation, probabilities missed, and wasted lives.

Richard Marinick was an ex-state cop (statie) from Massachusetts who became involved in the South Boston underworld. After robbing armored cars, he served ten years for the crime. Remarkably, he earned a B.A. and an M.A. in the Boston University Prison Program. His novel “Boyos” was as authentic as it gets, a genuinely outstanding piece of work in my view. His new one, “In For a Pound,” is a classic of South Boston noir, and a thinly veiled expose of that one person who was the nexus for Boston noir, Whitey Bulger, a gangster and FBI informant, and uttermost rat, who brought drugs into the neighborhood, contributing to the deaths of young humans resulting in untold suicides, murders, and drug overdoses.

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the point counterpoint to all of this with his seminal best vendor “All Souls: A Family Story From Southie.” He too discusses Bulger, but in a manner that is less depressing. He writes in regards to fierce if misplaced loyalties how proud the residents were to be from Southie, including MacDonald himself. He also writes with regards to how gentrification have wiped out the best factor of the neighborhood.

Of course, ex Bulger thugs like John “Red” Shea and Kevin Weeks have chipped in with “Rat Bastards” and “Brutal,” respectively. Rather than find Jesus, they found the pen (no pun intended).

If Italians are your thing, then Roland Merullo’s Revere Beach Boulevard will resonate well. Like the Irish, this great book touches on the fiercely loyal and consecrated Italian-American family of the Benedettos.

Boston noir is with regards to the smells and sounds of tough neighborhoods where the new mixes with the old, and the result is a confused mix of hope and despair. But not similar to those portrayed in movies like Monument Ave., The Departed, and Southie, etc, there are some lads who became true working class heroes.

They are blue-collar men who overcame a lot of obstacles and prevailed through determination and hard work to rise above an urban Irish American street culture that may be both suppressive and seductive. These are the real heroes.

All Souls A Family Story From Southie Photo

All Souls A Family Story From Southie Photo

All Souls A Family Story From Southie Photo

All Souls A Family Story From Southie Image

All Souls A Family Story From Southie Picture

All Souls A Family Story From Southie Photo