The author, Adair Lara, has won thousands of readers in America and Europe during her ten years as a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her articles are humorous, ironic, poignant, marvelously revealing commentaries on life in the 1990s, on love, marriage, and divorce, on raising teenagers, on being Irish and dealing with a large and unruly Irish family. Her work has been published in dozens of national magazines. She has a devoted following, especially in Northern California. Her columns about her reconciliation with a recalcitrant father who abandoned his family are especially moving.One reviewer wrote, "A major writer . . . her prose is taut, and details shimmer with meaning."