The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 352 pages
• Published by: W. W. Norton May 19, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0393059847
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0393059847
• Book Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Having told the sad, extraordinary story of her maternal grandmother, the painter Margarett Sargent, in The White Blackbird (1996), Moore offers a painfully honest memoir of her father, Paul Moore (1919–2003), the Episcopal bishop of the diocese of New York from 1972 to 1989. Educated at St. Paul's and Yale, Paul distinguished himself in battle as a marine on Guadalcanal during WWII; fathered nine children by his first wife, the vivacious Jenny McKean; and became an activist in the liberal social movements of the 1950s and '60s. He also had numerous clandestine affairs with men. While Paul's bisexuality did little harm to his professional career, it took a heavy emotional toll on his family, notably Jenny, who up to her death from cancer at age 51 confided to only a few intimates the underlying cause of the unhappiness in her marriage. The author, a poet and playwright, draws on letters between her parents, the reminiscences of friends (including a male lover of her father's) and her own experiences as her parents' oldest child coming of age in the '60s to create an indelible portrait of a charismatic religious leader who could be insensitive or even cruel to those who loved him most. At the dramatic heart of this engrossing family chronicle is the ultimately triumphant struggle of the daughter, who suffered her own sexual confusion and years of therapy, to reconstruct her father's personal history in an effort to understand his behavior and thereby forgive. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description
"An unsparing portrait of a glamorous but elusive father and his daughter's search for the truth about his secret life."-Sylvia Nasar

Paul Moore's vocation as an Episcopal priest took him-with his wife Jenny and a family that grew to nine children-from robber-baron wealth to work among the urban poor of postwar America, prominence as an activist bishop in Washington during the Johnson years, leadership in the civil rights and peace movements, and two decades as the bishop of New York. The Bishop's Daughter is a daughter's story of that complex, visionary man: a chronicle of her turbulent relationship with a father who struggled privately with his sexuality while she openly explored hers, and a searching account of the consequences of sexual secrets. With a depth of questioning that recalls James Carroll's An American Requiem, this memoir engages the reader in the great issues of American life: war, race, family, sexuality, and faith. 22 photographs.

Reader Reviews
A memoir that is religious and sexual at its core -- this is the story that Honor Moore tells of her father, herself and their places in their extended families. A WWII veteran who was convinced that his near-death experiences pointed him into religious life of the Episcopal Church, he rose to Bishop of Diocese of New York. But he was tormented by his double life as a bisexual -- and in a generation, his won daughter would struggle with her own sexuality, starting with an abortion and a non-coversation with the possible father. The book is a brief bio of her father, then of herself, and then of truths coming home to the light of day. A wonderful and honest book for the reader to consume. Comments (4) | | (Report this)