The old neighborhood was the place Joe Mackall left. It was a place where everyone’s parents worked at the factory at the dead end of the street, where the Catholic church and school operated like a religious city hall, and where a boy like Joe grew up vowing to get out as soon as he could and to shed his blue-collar beginnings and failed, flawed religion. When the mysterious death of a childhood friend draws him back to the last street before Cleveland, however, he discovers that there is more to “old haunts” than mere words—and more to severing one’s roots than just getting away.

 

The Last Street Before Cleveland chronicles Mackall’s descent into his past: the story of how, looking for answers about his lost friend, he stumbles on larger questions about himself. With clear-eyed candor, Mackall describes the resurfacing of dormant demons, the opening of the old chasms of depression and addiction, and the discovery, at rock bottom, of a flickering faith that casts a surprising light over everything that has come before. Mackall’s is, finally, a story about life—lived and lost, given and earned.

Joe Mackall is an associate professor of English and journalism at Ashland University and the editor of the nonfiction journal River Teeth. His essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies as well as on National Public Radio. He has also worked as a reporter for several newspapers, including the Washington Post.

A candid portrayal that oftentimes paints Mackall in a bad light, but he refused to back down from the truth.”—Collegian

"Powerfully imagined and poetically told."—George Fetherling, New Brunswick Reader

"With clear-eyed candor, Mackall describes the resurfacing of dormant demons, the opening of the old chasms of depression and addiction, and the discovery, at rock bottom, of a flickering faith that casts a surprising light over everything that has come before. Mackall's is, finally, a story about life—lived and lost, given and earned."—NewPages.com

"The Last Street Before Cleveland is a deeply personal book and one that packs a lot of emotion and power in a slim volume. . . . Well worth reading."—Kevin Holtsberry, Collected Miscellany

"Joe Mackall's The Last Street Before Cleveland is a welcome addition to the necessary literature of America's working class. He gives voice to men we wrongly think of as silent and he respects the enormity of the loss. He shows us, in tender, muscular prose, how glorious and arduous roots can be. In his own journey back to understanding, he complicates the meaning of leaving and finding our deepest homes."—Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family

"Beautifully written—honest, naked, graceful."—Brian Doyle, author of Leaping: Revelations and Epiphanies

"Joe Mackall's masterful memoir, The Last Street Before Cleveland, evokes adolescence as brilliantly as he evokes loss of faith, black-dog depression, the joys and trials of parenthood, struggles with substance abuse, and above all the rediscovery of a divine principle in all of human life, his included. This is the work of a truly mature man and author, one who, in the Psalmist's words has, after long trial, been transported from the Pit and onto a wide place. This is that rare account that deserves the name 'spiritual journey.'"—Sydney Lea, author of A Little Wildness and Hunting the Whole Way Home