Angela's Ashes, the author Frank McCourt gives his whole self in the telling of this story. It is his life's journey- the hardship, horrors, pain and suffering that he endures.
Set in 1936, Angela's Ashes follows the difficult lives of Angela McCourt, her husband, Malachy and their children. The oldest child of the family Frank McCourt was born into the worst kind of poverty in Brooklyn, New York. Frank and his family wore nothing more than rags and the little food they had came from the charity of kind people. His mother, Angela didn't work and his father always drank his paycheck away. Even with out steady income to support one child, the McCourt family kept on growing extending to Malachy, Margaret, the twins- Eugene and Oliver, and eventually Michael and Alphonsus. Thus, beginning at a young age, Frank had the responsibility of tending to his brothers and sisters while his mother was desperately trying to find food to feed the family, and his father was getting drunk in the bars.
Although Frank's father was not around for most of Frank's life, Malachy did nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he could provide: a story. Throughout Angela's Ashes Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain and The Angel on the Seventh Step, Frank's very own angel who also brings his mother babies.
Through all of this Frank remains a rock, a steady foundation for the sake of his family.
In Angela's Ashes, Frank endures poverty, near starvation and the cruelty of relatives and neighbours- yet he overcomes his misfortunes. Although Frank McCourt faced numerous impediments, he is ready to start over and better his life.