This is an Almost True Irish Story. Murphy was a child of the newly emerging 1950's Irish middle class. He was raised in the environment of a conflicted marriage that never should have happened. While his privileged upbringing seemed idyllic to the outside world, his reality was starkly different. Life at home was always turbulent; he never knew what daily chaos would erupt.
Murphy was unsettled by the rigid Irish class system where social status predetermined one's future, thereby condemning innocent children and adults to the inevitability of an impoverished life. Signs of his destruction from alcohol were evident in his early teens. He became a meteor raging through the lives of those who loved him and many who didn't. Eventually, he emigrates to America where he reinvents himself and becomes another American success story.