A constant theme in Moehringer’s work is the intergenerational trauma that informed his family life and his personal development. This trauma was borne of generations of poverty and domestic violence. Moehringer’s family stories and personal memories clarify that by becoming a man who did not physically or psychologically harm his partner, he was breaking a painful, generations-long cycle of abuse.

The author describes how his maternal great-grandmother, Maggie O’Keefe, grew up poor in Ireland. As the eldest of 13 children, she had a great deal of responsibility in her family, and though she took her younger siblings to school could not attend herself. No one in the family knew why Maggie left Ireland, only that her American husband resented her for her illiteracy and lack of education. Their marriage deteriorated, and her husband drank heavily and beat her. Her daughter, Moehringer’s grandmother, often told him about an incident in which her brothers saved their mother from their father’s violence. Moehringer recounts how she used her family stories to create male heroes for him, inspiring him to emulate these heroes as he grew into a man himself. Even when he was very young, he understood that his grandmother was trying her best to fill the void of a real father figure in his life with the characters in her stories.