"The Luck of Ginger Coffey" by Brian Moore.

The luck of the Irish meets the Great Canadian Dream., April 29, 2003 Reviewer: from Ottawa, Ontario Canada I truly love this book. In it, Brian Moore explores one man's heroic attempt to shift position in the world. Ginger Coffey leaves the unpromising economic situation in Dublin Ireland to pursue his idea of the Great Canadian Dream. With wife and daughter in tow, he arrives in Montreal in the dead of winter with $15.03 to his name. He …

…resides in the private domain, in intimate relationships. It is for this reason that the central drama of the story, which is intertwined with Ginger's search for wealth and public recognition in the New World, is the collapse of his marriage to Vera. Moore deals with these serious themes in a novel that is very light to read and even "comic" at most points. Ginger Coffey is an unforgettable character... the quintessential well-intentioned optimist/dreamer.