Allan Square is a dark yet humorous coming-of-age story about a young girl growing up during the 1940s and 1950s in one of the roughest neighbourhoods in St. John's. Shirley Murphy was only seven years old when her father died and life as she knew it changed forever. Poor and often hungry, she lived with an alcoholic stepfather, a combative mother, and four brothers who treated her the way only brothers can. In Allan Square, Shirley vividly describes attending wakes at the homes of the deceased (for the food), trading kisses with ushers for admission to the Capitol Theatre, soaking up the sights and sounds of Water Street, and surviving a dysfunctional family in the St. John's urban playground of Livingstone Street, Allan Square, Theatre Hill, and Queen's Road.