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Aliberti writes torrents of fast-moving, colorful prose. He sprints and soars, propelling the reader through the lives of Italian immigrants in California and then through a mishmash of the families, precarious living situations, odd jobs, schools, illnesses, wheeling and dealing of savings and loans, construction projects, businesses, and sports teams of their firstborn. The author makes one thing perfectly clear: how in all the scramble, the innocence of youth is very easily and early lost. Joey seems to grow up in a couple of sentences, not just a couple of chapters. By the time his wife dies suddenly of an unexpected coronary event, the reader is also in the throes of shock, as Aliberti has so minutely recreated the traumatic experience.
For the next five years, Joey "… worked a lot of hours and spent a lot of time raising the kids and being involved in their activities. It was so hard. It happened at a time in life when everything was getting better and getting exciting. And then the bottom fell out." Joey finally realized that remembering the good things had to be weighed in with the bad. This "sunk in" and helped him with his life and future. Aliberti's son follows in his father's footsteps in sports and "came to work as an apprentice carpenter" in the family construction business. The memoir wanders through more challenges and once again offers a cogent observation: "A lesson learned that I would like to pass on is that life goes on and the times when you get down on yourself just take a moment to weigh the good as well as the bad that has happened." Aliberti shows how life, given time, inevitably just continues. His extremely heartfelt memoir might especially appeal to those with similar experiences.