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.