Raised in a loving Catholic family in Denver, Martin Moran was a star student who imagined that he’d one day become a U.S. senator. When he was twelve years old, a camp counselor seduced him, initiating a sexual relationship that would last three years–and haunt Moran’s life for decades. He discovered a passion for acting and built a career that would take him to Broadway, but only when Moran finally tracked down and confronted his abuser thirty years later could he finally forgive himself for someone’s else trespass. Funny and tender about growing up Catholic and gay, The Tricky Part never oversimplifies either the abuse or the vexing work of recovering from it. This powerful story carries us to the heart of a paradox: that what we think of as damage may be the very thing that gives rise to transformation, even grace.

The Tricky Part: A boy's story of sexual trespass, a man's journey to forgiveness (Triangle Awards)

Self-Help

Moran, Martin

Relationships

Anchor

Alps 4000: 75 Peaks in 52 Days

Travel

Travel Writing

David & Charles, UK

Many climbers dedicate a lifetime to the conquest of the Alpine peaks over 4000 metres high, but Martin Moran and Simon Jenkins set out to climb all 75 of them in one continuous journey. Furthermore, they shunned motorized transport, and instead used bicycles to travel from one starting point to the next. Faced with blizzards, white-outs and thunderstorms, and fighting hunger, exhaustion and near-despair, the two men succeeded in their attempt, covering more than 1000km, including 70,000 metres of ascent, in just 52 days. This is Moran's account of the journey, interspersed with extracts from Jenkins's diary.

Sports & Outdoors

Mountaineering

Sterling Pub. Co., Inc.

Background information on winter climate, weather and snow conditions, detailed historical appraisals of the development of winter mountaineering and instructional advice on mountaineering skills and techniques are complemented throughout this text by the author's personal narratives.

Scotland's Winter Mountains

Europe

David&Charles

Formed of ancient sediments and volcanic outpourings, then sculpted by ice into a mosaic of mountain, loch and sea, the landscape of the region is as weird as it is wonderful. Blessed with a climate where moisture and light combine with infinite variety and contrast, this is paradise for the dedicated photographer. The heart of the North-West Highlands, Wester Ross encompasses the open hill country of Kintail, the exquisite beauties of Lochalsh and Plockton, the bold peninsula of Applecross, the mountain castles of Torridon and the extensive coastal fringe with its remote headlands, sandy beaches and scattered settlements. The region terminates in the gaunt hills of Coigach and the bristly ridge of Stac Pollaidh. Ever-present in its seaward views, the Isle of Skye has a romantic attachment for people throughout the world, captivated by its colourful history and desolate beauty.

The Magic of Wester Ross & Skye

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Scotland's Winter Mountains: The Challenge and the Skills

Winter Sports

All the Rage: A Quest to Understand Anger, Loss, and Forgiveness

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Beacon Press

Between the ages of twelve and fifteen, Martin Moran had a sexual relationship with an older man, a counselor he'd met at a Catholic boys' camp. Almost thirty years later, at the age of forty-two, he set out to find and face his abuser. The Tricky Part tells the story of this relationship and its complex effect on the man Moran became. He grew up in an exemplary Irish Catholic family-his great aunt was a cloistered nun; his father, a newspaper reporter. They might have lived in the Denver neighborhood of Virginia Vale, but they belonged to Christ the King, the church and school up the hill. And the lessons Martin absorbed, as a good Catholic boy, were filled with the fraught mysteries of the spirit and the flesh. Into that world came Bob-a Vietnam vet carving a ranch-camp out of the mountain wilderness, showing the boys under his care how to milk cows, mend barbed wire fence, and raft rivers. He drove a six-wheeled International Harvester truck; he could read the stars like a map. He also noticed a young boy who seemed a little unsure of himself, and he introduced that boy to the secret at the center of bodies. Told with startling candor and disarming humor, The Tricky Part carries us to the heart of a paradox-that what we think of as damage may be the very thing that gives rise to transformation, even grace.

The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace

Humor & Entertainment

With a New Afterword “This account of a Roman Catholic boyhood interrupted—and derailed—retains a luminous, novelistic complexity that sets it apart from similar tales of stolen childhoods.” (Ben Brantley, New York Times) Between the ages of twelve and fifteen, Martin Moran had a sexual relationship with an older man, a counselor he’d met at a Catholic boys’ camp. Almost thirty years later, at the age of forty-two, he set out to find and face his abuser. The Tricky Part tells the story of this relationship and its complex effect on the man Moran became. Told with startling candor and disarming humor, The Tricky Part carries us to the heart of a paradox: that what we think of as damage may be the very thing that gives rise to transformation, even grace.

The Tricky Part: A Boy's Story of Sexual Trespass, a Man's Journey to Forgiveness

LGBTQ+ Books

A moving and surprisingly funny memoir about finding the right balance between anger and compassion “Why aren’t you angry?” people often asked Martin Moran after he told his story of how he came to forgive the man who sexually abused him as a boy. At first, the question pissed him off. Then, it began to haunt him. Why didn’t he have more anger? Why had he never sought redress for the crime committed against him? Was his fury hidden, buried? Was he not man enough? Here he was, an adult in mid-life, with an established acting career, a husband. A life. And yet the question of rage began to obsess him. As the narrative jumps from dream to memory to theory, from Colorado to New York to Johannesburg, Moran takes us along on his quest to understand the role of rage in our lives. Translating for an asylum seeker and survivor of torture, he wonders how the man is not consumed with the wrong done him, only to shortly thereafter find himself in a wild confrontation with his fuming stepmother at his father’s funeral. He admires a pedestrian’s furious put-down of a careless driver, and then, observing with a group of sex therapists at an S&amp;M dungeon, he finds himself unexpectedly moved by the intimacy of the interchanges. Hiking the Rockies with his troubled younger brother, he’s confronted by the anger and the love that seem to exist simultaneously and in equal measure between them. With each encounter, we move more deeply into the human complexities at the heart of this book: into how we wrong and are wronged, how we seek redress but also forgiveness, how we yearn to mend what we think broken in us and liberate ourselves from what’s past. It is in this landscape of old wounds and complicated loves that Moran shows us how rage may meet compassion and our traumas unexpectedly open us to the humanity of others.

All the Rage: A Quest

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Books by Moran, Martin