"McCann has written about his father, a journalist as well.In his essay "Looking for the Rozziner," first published in "Granta" magazine, McCann writes, "It may have stretched towards parody – "bygod the man could handle a shovel, just like his old man" – but there was something acute about it, the desire to come home, to push the body in a different direction to the mind, the need to be tired alongside him in whatever small way, the emigrant's desire to root around in the old soil."