Frank McCourt?s glorious childhood memoir, Angela?s Ashes, has been loved and
celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its profound
humanity. A tale of redemption, in which storytelling itself is the source of
salvation, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times
Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Rarely has a book so swiftly found its place
on the literary landscape. And now we have ?Tis, the story of Frank?s American
journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank
lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the
boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the
vivid hierarchies of this ?classless country,? and then is drafted into the army
and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports. It is Frank?s
incomparable voice?his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue?that
renders these experiences spellbinding. When Frank returns to America in 1953,
he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and
women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should ?stick to
their own kind? once they arrive. Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting
an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New
York University. There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee,
long-legged and blonde, and tries to live his dream. But it is not until he
starts to teach?and to write?that Frank finds his place in the world. The same
vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela?s
Ashes comes of age. As Malcolm Jones said in his Newsweek review of Angela?s
Ashes, ?It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he
leaves them wanting more when he is done...and McCourt proves himself one of the
very best.? Frank McCourt's ?Tis is one of the most eagerly awaited books of our
time, and it is a masterpiece.