Luck Was a Stranger

Who is Bill Cooney? Is he a poet, a madman, a former candidate for the priesthood, a son of one of the most prosperous and well-liked men in the tiny town of Kilbeggan, Ireland, an apple thief, a man spared three times from certain death, a gadfly, a fearless Saxon warrior, a student of medicine at Trinity College, a truck driver, a store clerk, an insurance inspector, a night watchman, a businessman, a writer of hundreds of unpublished puns, a husband, a father, a grandfather, an animal lover? Yes, and he''s also the author of this memoir.

Born into a prosperous Irish family, Bill Cooney had his life planned out for him before it even began. His mother told him he was destined for the priesthood. His father wanted him to be a doctor. But what he wanted most was to be free. He got out from under the controlling forces of his parents and the Church, to make his own way, leaving for the frontier land of Canada, a journey that took him from prosperity to poverty, and finally, to America, the promised land, where he found that dreams do come true, and nightmares as well.