Ma, I'm Gettin Meself a New Mammy: A Memoir of Dublin at the Turn of the 1960s

After numerous arrests for shoplifting, Martha is sent to the convent where, the judge rules, she is to get an education. Martha is relieved to be out of the clutches of her horrible drunken stepfather, Jackser, and her feckless mother, Sally, but anxious about what awaits. Her days in the convent are steady, predictable, safe—everything that her life had not been prior to being sent away. But as she says, "You can have a full belly, but your heart can be very empty." Put to back-breaking w...