Sid Noonan

Sid Noonan is Mike Noonan’s brother and an important, if mostly offstage, source of family information. In one extended phone conversation, his casual recollections establish details about the Noonans’ origins and an inherited boat; much later, a family tree links their ancestry to Harry Auster, making Sid’s call part of the gradual unveiling of a hidden connection.

Identity and Family

Sid is addressed as Sid, Siddy, and the Sidster. His conversation with Mike reveals contrasting family backgrounds: their father’s people came from Prout’s Neck, while their mother came from Memphis. Sid is cautious about genealogical detail, joking that he is still unsure of the difference between a nephew and a cousin. That limitation does not make his recollections useless; his remarks preserve fragments of family history that Mike later reconsiders in light of new evidence.

The Phone Call and Jo’s Questions

During the call, Sid asks how Mike is doing. Mike says that he had struggled to begin a new book but now seems to be back on track, reflecting a family habit of discussing trouble only after it has passed. Sid, meanwhile, says his new accounting business is beginning to take hold. He thanks Mike for a bridge loan made the previous November, and Mike answers that it was the least he could do, especially given how much time Sid spends with their mother in person and on the phone.

Mike uses the conversation to ask about the family tree and whether Jo had asked Sid similar questions. Sid confirms that she had. Asked when, he places her inquiries around the time Patrick had an appendectomy, probably in February 1994, though March was possible. The date prompts Mike to recall Jo’s day trips to the TR and her persistent questioning there. Sid’s estimate therefore helps situate her investigation in time, even though he does not explain what she was pursuing.

The Noonan Family’s Boat

Sid also confirms the family story of their father’s first boat: the Lazy Betty, originally owned by Paul Noonan of Prout’s Neck. The boat was badly damaged in Hurricane Donna in 1960, as Sid remembers it, and their father put it up for sale in 1963. Sid does not know what became of it. His recollection supplies a concrete piece of family history amid Mike’s effort to reconstruct the past, linking the Noonan family to a specific vessel, place, and sequence of dates.

The Hidden Auster Connection

The significance of Sid’s imperfect family knowledge becomes clearer when Mike later finds a genealogical chart among Jo’s records. It identifies James Noonan as Mike’s great-grandfather and shows that James had an older sister, Bridget, who married Benton Auster. Their son Harry Auster was born in 1885. Mike recognizes that Harry was Kenny Auster’s grandfather and his own granduncle, establishing a blood connection between the Noonan and Auster families.

This discovery also qualifies an earlier claim by Max Devore that the Noonans and Devores shared a common ancestral past: the chart shows that Mike’s great-grandfather had not shared the same pit as Jared Devore. Sid does not uncover the connection himself, but his earlier confirmation that Jo had asked family-tree questions places him within the chain of recollection that frames Mike’s discovery. His limited, ordinary family talk becomes one strand in a larger investigation whose consequences reach across generations.