LAST PICK

In this memoir, a man describes a childhood and adolescence spent in a small town in New York state, with a focus on 1959.

O’Donnell, who achieved prominence as a trial lawyer, introduces this slim volume by explaining he had an impulse in the late 1990s to record his childhood memories. The author actually lost, recovered, and revised the manuscript twice before finally publishing it. Given that history, the repetition of certain details is understandable. O’Donnell grew up in Averill Park, near Troy, in central New York state. He puts special emphasis on people, events, and (most of all) the ambiance of 1959, a glorious year pivotal for the author as an adolescent Irish Catholic having a triumphant (largely crisis-free) coming-of-age. Reflections are almost always fond even though O’Donnell’s title references that among his schoolboy peers, he was habitually bullied and picked last for sports (as much as he adored baseball and football) because of his pudgy frame. In contrast, the author’s dad was a fitness buff, a Depression-hewn World War II veteran, hard worker, ethical liquor store proprietor, and solid family man. O’Donnell’s mother was liberal-minded and literate; late in life, she went back to school and became a librarian. The family’s Roman Catholicism is rarely a source of repression; in fact, the author writes that, under different circumstances, he could have entered the priesthood. In this charming, upbeat portrait with rich, evocative details, there is also a nurturing maiden aunt, a strict but cherished schoolteacher, a family ghost (“She had dark hair, high cheekbones, and a pleasant smile”), hunting and fishing trips with nearby eccentrics, early TV favorites, and the resigned acceptance of anti-Catholic prejudice among the area’s Methodists and critics of President John F. Kennedy. Finally, O’Donnell recounts that he overcame his challenges to make Eagle Scout. An epilogue indicates that adult life was not entirely rosy for the storyteller, but there are no rueful or bitter associations with his boyhood—especially 1959. Author William Kennedy (Ironweed), athletes Mickey Mantle and Jack Dempsey, and entertainer Jerry Lewis make cameos in this sweet-spirited memoir that skillfully resists becoming mawkish. The engaging book may remind readers of Tom Brokaw’s A Long Way Home (2002) and Bob Greene’s Be True to Your School (1987).

An affectionate, appealing, and unsentimental look back on an all-American boyhood in the ’50s.