The eagerly anticipated follow-up to Ron McLarty’s poignant and deep-souled debut, The Memory of Running When Ron McLarty’s debut novel, The Memory of Running, appeared, the publishing world sat up and took notice. Now, McLarty is back with another reason to cheer the arrival of his distinctive new voice. Jono Riley is an aging part-time actor and bartender trying to make ends meet in Manhattan when he receives a letter from a childhood friend telling him that Marie, the first girl Jono ever loved, had just died in her sleep. As Jono makes the trip back home to the working-class neighborhood of East Providence, Rhode Island, McLarty deftly travels between Jono’s adolescence in the early 1960s and the present story of his return.