An Instant New York Times Bestseller
An Instant USA Today Bestseller
A TIME Best Book of the Summer
A Rolling Stone Top Culture Pick
A Publishers Weekly Best Memoir of the Season
A Buzzfeed Book Pick
A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Book
A Chicago Tribune Book Pick
A Boston.com Book You Should Read
A Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List
An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Month
A 2022 New England Book Award Finalist
Isaac Fitzgerald has been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives - or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald recounts his ongoing search for a more expansive definition of family and self. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others.