The author describes the journey of a young boy growing up in a middle class neighborhood in Philadelphia born to a father whose life was destroyed by the Great Depression and a mother born in the United States who escaped in the most harrowing circumstances from the Ukraine in the middle of the Bolshevik revolution.

These parents invested their entire being in their children in the hope that they could achieve what they could not due to circumstances over which they had no control. So began the journey of this young man as he attempted to fulfill their dream for a better life for...