Part history, part memoir and part meditation, this outstanding book of poetry and prose confirms Michael McCarthy as a powerful storyteller and an acute observer of the human condition. Like a Tree weaves a memoir of McCarthy from his boyhood in rural Ireland overshadowed by an accident that resulted in the death of his brother to his studies at Carlow College and his journey to becoming ordained. Interspersed throughout is a biographical sketch of Carlow College Ireland's first Catholic third-level college and second only to Trinity College.