Mother-daughter travel is a birthday tradition for singer-songwriter O'Grady, a Beacon resident, who frames this tale within one such trip to an Arizona spa in the wake of a deep depression. She side-treks into her dream life, an ongoing dialectic with the essence of Ernest Hemingway, and other trips with her Irish immigrant mom to take us with her on an often hilarious journey inward, back to bliss and conscious co-creation told with rock 'n' roll candor. O'Grady is impishly irreverent with a spot-on BS detector, making the revelations she experiences ring fresh and genuine.
Chronogram Magazine
The author tells her story with humor and whimsy… the memoir delivers a captivating and candid look at how humans can learn to “become artisans, transforming pain into love.” An engaging, honest, and eccentric account of a spiritual journey.
Murder, madness, mayhem, and because it’s an Irish tale, the mother too. Tara takes a meditative journey of the heart in The Gods of Clown Alley.
Colin Broderick, author and filmmaker – Emerald City
The Gods of Clown Alley twists and turns through carousel realizations of what we carry and how we carry it, which shapes our path, our questions and our spirit, as it leads us inexplicably towards liberation. Tara O’Grady spins a tale of compassionate awakening to warm your heart.
Robert Waggoner, author and speaker – Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self
An unconventional and perceptive memoir that aims to inspire readers to 'discover the happiness that is waiting to be revealed at his or her core.'
...thoughtful, insightful prose...
...surprising insights on the nature of the American Dream and the immigrant experience.
Migrating toward Happiness reads like a song, an intimate melody, made vibrant by the rhythm of motion and the shifting accents of the immigrant voice. This story is at once familiar and extraordinary – it could be anyone’s family, any American journey – but the storytelling is so poignant, so lively and enchanting, that the tale is utterly seductive. Tara O’Grady sings from the page in this charming debut, and her readers will be keen for an encore.
Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt
You see more than the USA in Tara O'Grady's Chevrolet. All memoirs are journeys but this one is exhilarating, effervescent, and sometimes sad. All men should read it to help them understand the magic of the workings of a woman's mind and all women should read it for affirmation. It's got prose, poetry, music, musing and humor spiced with history all soaring in a wild profusion of color and romance settling on a positive peak. Get elevated. Read it. I loved it!
Malachy McCourt, A Monk Swimming
It's a wonderful story of magical events occurring at just the right time, synchronistic events spanning the globe and a trip across America (but in many ways, a trip into family, identity and self). An enjoyable, funny and thoughtful book - I'm already looking forward to her next book.
Robert Waggoner, Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self