In “These Moments,” Daniel J. Curran offers up–in a colorful quilt of vignettes—the story of his personal odyssey from the hardscrabble neighborhood in Woodside, Queens, New York, where he grew up, to his ultimate escape to the greenery of the Pacific Northwest where he thrived, and his sheer, impressively dogged persistence in willing himself to do what his ambitions told him he could do if he tried. He conquered the drug and alcohol addiction of his youth that ended up killing his younger brother Phil and too many others in his neighborhood. He got three college degrees in middle age. He became a successful business manager. He pushed himself to become a long-distance cyclist. He journeyed back to his ancestral village, Cahersiveen, in Southwest Ireland and rode the 100-mile Ring of Kerry Charity Cycling event. And he pushed himself to master the art of telling stories on paper as he does so well here. “These Moments” with its flashes of both humor and melancholy has something of the feel of Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes,” another son of Ireland. It’s a good read and certainly worth some of your moments.
