Kennedy

Ironweed is a 1983 novel by William Kennedy. Part of Kennedy's "Albany Cycle" of novels, Ironweed tells the story of an alcoholic, wandering man and woman during the Great Depression, named Francis Phelan who left his family after accidentally dropping his infant son on his head and killing him while drunk. The novel focuses on his return to Albany, New York and is often interrupted by Francis' hallucinations, which result from a lifetime of chronic alcoholism. The novel received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and features characters that return in some of Kennedy's other books.