Maureen Waters was the first member of her family not born in Ireland, and grew up in the southwest Bronx neighborhood of Highbridge. She would leave the Irish ghetto to become a respected academic, who has lunched with Mary Robinson, and runs the Irish Studies program at Queens College.

Sadly for Dr. Waters, there is more. There is a bad marriage. There is cancer, and a rebellious son, whose life ended tragically on New Year's Eve in 1992. But out of this tragedy, Waters has spun a mesmerizing new book: "Crossing Highbridge: A Memoir of Irish America."

In a mere 140 pages, Waters recreates the thoroughly Irish Bronx of the 1950s, chronicles her mixed emotions as she pursues a teaching career in the 1960s, and confronts tragedy in more recent years.

Waters' mother came to America from Mayo, her father from Sligo. Both brought from war-torn Ireland passionate nationalist feelings. But Daniel and Agnes Waters also instilled in their children a sense of optimism.

"Though we lived in...a small apartment," Waters writes, "we had a room with a view, an expanding horizon.... We had a window on America. It belonged to us in all its vividness, with all the possibilities that lurked around the corner or on the other side of the bridge."

Even in the crowded field of Irish memoirs, Waters' book stands out.

(Syracuse University Press / $23.95 / 149 pages)