In his beautiful, poignant new book, My Father Left Me Ireland, Michael Brendan Dougherty reveals the truth about the things we don’t, or can’t, talk about. Longing for a father, longing for patriotism, wanting to believe in something, and finding these things difficult in our jaded world, Dougherty’s memoir resonates because loving your father and loving his history isn’t unique to just some people and some places. We all want these same intangible things Dougherty so deftly describes.

Dougherty’s parents, an Irishman and an Irish American mother, had broken up before his birth, and Dougherty was raised by his single mother in the suburbs of New York. Dougherty’s father was mostly absent from his life, and that absence informed the way Dougherty viewed his Irish heritage.