Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional

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Our booksellers' favorite books of the year!

As someone who reads a lot of memoirs, it takes a lot for me to read one and think "This book has changed me as a person, a reader, or as a writer." Dirtbag, Massachusetts manages to hit all three in a way that left me clutching the book to my chest when I finished. This book is for every adult who grew up with a traumatic childhood, made some mistakes, and lived to tell the tale. It's for the misfits, romantics, dreamers, doers, and those who believe that no matter what life throws at them, it'll all make for a good story at the end. This book deserves to be shared.   Recommended By Katherine M., Powells.com

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER

"The best of what memoir can accomplish... pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy." —Esquire, Best Memoirs of the Year

A TIME Best Book of the Summer * A Rolling Stone Top Culture Pick * A Publishers Weekly Best Memoir of the Season * A Buzzfeed Book Pick * A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Book * A Chicago Tribune Book Pick * A Boston.com Book You Should Read * A Los Angeles Times Book to Add to Your Reading List * An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Month * A 2022 New England Book Award Finalist

Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives — or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.

Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others.

Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.

"Fitzgerald weaves a raucous mosaic of a rough-and-ready New England rarely seen with a transfixing story of his path to finding himself....A marvelous coming-of-age story that's as wily and raunchy as it is heartfelt." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Isaac Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays is a bighearted read infused with candor, sharp humor, and the hope that comes from discovering saints can be found in all sorts of places." Rolling Stone, Top Culture Picks of the Month

"Dirtbag, Massachusetts is the best of what memoir can accomplish. It's blisteringly honest and vulnerable, pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy." Esquire, Best Memoirs of the Year

"Told without piety or violin strains of uplift, but rather, an embrace of the chaos of just getting by." Chicago Tribune, Books for Summer 2022: Our Picks

"Fitzgerald reflects on his origins — and coming to terms with self-consciousness, anger, and strained family relationships. His writing is gritty yet vulnerable." TIME, 27 New Books You Need to Read This Summer

“Isaac Fitzgerald contains multitudes in this frank, engaging memoir: severely lapsed Catholic, lifelong rabble-rouser, well-inked tattoo aficionado. [The tales] recounted here find the bittersweet spot between dirtbag and sublime.” Entertainment Weekly, Best New Books of July

"Equal parts illuminating and poignant, Fitzgerald's essays attempt to untangle what it means to be a man in this world and in his own body." Buzzfeed, Summer Books You Won't Be Able To Put Down

"An endearing and tattered catalog of one man's transgressions and the ways in which it is our sins, far more than our virtues, that make us who we are." New York Times Book Review

“Fitzgerald joins the ranks of some of the very best memoirists….This entertaining and thoughtful book reveals Fitzgerald's talents as a master craftsman of unusual insight and will leave readers eager for more.” BookPage (Starred Review)

"Tenderhearted....Fitzgerald's stories are introspective and exude self-awareness. Readers will leave with a true soft spot for him." Library Journal

"Ebullient, irreverent, tender, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a record of a love for the world in all its messy fullness that you just can't fake, and how that came to be. I felt more alive after reading these essays, and whatever I thought I knew, Isaac Fitzgerald taught me something new. He's a ringleader for the Circus in the House of Love." Alexander Chee, author of How To Write An Autobiographical Novel

"Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a wondrously crafted confessional in every sense of the word, one of the finest, and really sneakiest narrative boasts I've read in decades. Isaac Fitzgerald will remind you of the wobbly majesty possible when fears of tomorrow and yesterday are innovatively confronted and masculinity is shredded. Goodness gracious." Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

"This book, this beautiful, sprawling, chaotic memoir in essays, is indeed a confessional. It is a man peeling back the layers of himself, revealing the white of his bones, the depth of his soul, the truth of his flaws, and the power of the best parts of him, of which there are so many. Isaac Fitzgerald will make you feel absolutely everything as he recounts a childhood no one should have to endure, and how he has tried to rebuild the parts of himself that other people broke. He is charming and vulnerable, curious and candid, full of dirtbag swagger. I loved this book. When I turned the last page, I wanted more but was so grateful to have spent this time with a man who is on the complicated but joyful journey of becoming and being himself." Roxane Gay

"Isaac Fitzgerald lays himself bare in this stunning memoir, stripping off all the things that no long serve him. Raw, vulnerable, and powerful, this book will be a key in the lock of many hearts and minds." Emma Straub

"Vulnerable, revealing, and tender, Fitzgerald's Dirtbag, Massachusetts has it all — faith, sex, fear, resilience, and love. His is a story of a real American family and a beautiful and creative American son." Min Jin Lee, author of the National Book Award Finalist Pachinko

"Any fool can confess. It's the rare writer who reveals, and Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a heart on the sleeve, demons in check, eyes unblinking, unbearably sad, laugh-out-loud funny revelation." Marlon James, Booker Prize-winning author of Moon Witch, Spider King

"Dirtbag, Massachusetts isn't just a book; it's life-work." Saeed Jones, author of How We Fight For Our Lives

"Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a diamond of a memoir. Fitzgerald's sentences are so clean and true that you'll never realize you're cut until you're bleeding. Or you know, crying." Mira Jacob, author of The Sleepwalker's Guide To Dancing

"This book is a rock anthem you're so busy dancing to you almost don't notice when the lyrics slip in and break your heart. What a gorgeous, sensitive, rambunctious, and funny book about the ways we survive our own lives and choices. I loved going on adventures with Fitzgerald in these essays, hunting alongside him for the kinds of chosen family and love and purpose and storytelling that have the power to carry us through even the darkest of days." CJ Hauser, author of The Crane Wife

"Dirtbag, Massachusetts is glimmering, dirty, and humble. A masterful blend of humor, intelligence, and craft. This book is the antidote to toxic masculinity." Chloe Caldwell, author of The Red Zone: A Love Story

"As an essayist and editor, Fitzgerald had long served as a kind of genial barkeep of the literary internet — an avuncular, boozy presence with killer taste in books." Robert Moor, New York Magazine

"Any fool can confess. It's the rare writer who reveals, and Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a heart on the sleeve, demons in check, eyes unblinking, unbearably sad, laugh-out-loud funny revelation." Marlon James, author of Moon Witch, Spider King

Isaac Fitzgerald appears frequently on The Today Show and is the author of the bestselling children's book How to Be a Pirate as well as the co-author of Pen & Ink and Knives & Ink (winner of an IACP Award). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Best American Nonrequired Reading, and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.