The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Honor Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2008

"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.

Editorial Reviews

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)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Poet Moore explored key aspects of her intriguing legacy in The White Blackbird (1996), a biography of her artist grandmother, Margarett Sargent, but there was much left to tell, as readers discover in this galvanizing portrait of her famous parents. Heir to wealth, tall and charming Paul Moore Jr. became a radical Episcopalian priest devoted to social justice. He ministered to the poor in Jersey City, Indianapolis, and Washington, D.C., then became bishop of New York, preaching for two decades at St. John the Divine Cathedral. He and his equally ardent and brilliant wife had nine children. Born in 1945, Honor was the oldest, and felt more invisible with each sibling. Entwining candid reminiscences with the fruits of often unnerving research, Moore creates a dramatic family history that casts fresh light on the civil rights, peace, and women’s movements, and the corresponding evolution of the Episcopalian Church. But the blazing heart of the book is the revelation of her father’s secret homosexual affairs. As Moore struggles to recalibrate her understanding of her confounding parents, she revisits her own relationships with both men and women. The result is a generous and thought-provoking chronicle of public altruism and private betrayal, high ideals and forbidden desire, love and forgiveness. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (May 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393059847
• ISBN-13: 978-0393059847
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #704,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fallen Family, May 10, 2008

By 

C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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 own 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.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating autobiography written with compassion and understanding, May 25, 2008

By 

Yesh Prabhu, author of The Beech Tree (Plainsboro, New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir (Hardcover)

The author, Honor Moore, was born to very wealthy parents. It is no exaggeration to say that she was born with the proverbial "gold spoon in her mouth". Her father, the Rt. Rev. Bishop Paul Moore, the famous Episcopal Bishop who lived in New York, was a descendant of an aristocratic family, and her mother, Jenny McKean was an heir to a fabulous and old fortune. To quote the author:

"My father was born in 1919, the beneficiary of vast wealth. He was a grandson of William H. Moore, Palm Beach, where they lived in an Addison Mizner villa, Lake Worth on one side of the house and a wide ocean beach on the other." In addition, he owned a house in the Adirondacks by the lake, an enormous apartment in Manhattan on the eighteenth floor of a building on Fifth Avenue, with a view of Central Park, and a house in Connecticut by the Long Island Sound also.

Even though the book is titled "The Bishop's Daughter", it has a great deal of information, both pleasant and unpleasant, about the famous Episcopalian Bishop. The Bishop was wealthy, but he wasn't a happy man. His first wife considered him "the most unhappy man she had ever known." He was married twice, and he had nine children. And he had a lover named Andrew Verver also. Their secret romance lasted over 28 years. With a great deal of courage, compassion, affection, and understanding, the author describes the relationship and romance the Bishop had with Andrew. I was quite moved when I read the passages that desribed in detail their romance. After reading those passages I thought Andrew is a friendly, decent and lovable man.

The author was estranged from her father. But she reconciled after the Bishop became ill and he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, melanoma of the brain. After the Bishop's death, she met Andrew in New York to try to understand and also to get more information about their love affair, and then they drove to Connecticut to visit the Bishop's grave.

This is a sad and very moving autobiography, written in simple, clear and elegant prose: "He had been a fixture there for years, a giant of a man with white hair, tilting from side to side (he had a hip problem), often walking Percy, his tiny Yorkshire terrier. There was a café on the corner, and, directly across the street, a one-story building with tall windows and what looked from the outside like a vaulted ceiling. It housed a hairdresser who seemed always to have the most beautiful and exotic flowers in his salon." Reading this book will touch your heart.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A susbstantive memoir, July 6, 2008

By 

Stephen Martz (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Of the summer's two "gay Episcopal" memoirs -- the other being Gene Robinson's book -- I found Honor Moore's by far the more substantive. Nearly all of us wrestle with our parents, and the more charismatic and larger than life they are, the more likely it is that this wrestling will leave us wounded. Honor Moore courageously shows us her wounds (and her wonder) as well as her father's complexity and her mother's humanity.

Moore opens a window onto the significant social pressures Episcopal clergy once faced to sunder their sexuality from their spirituality -- conservative evangelicals take note -- and this alone makes her book a valuable contribution to church social history.

The real beauty of the book, however, lies in its depiction of two parents and their eldest daughter trying to live their lives as authentically as they can. This is difficult in any era, no matter what the current social prejudices, and if none of the three quite succeeds as much as we would have wished, their journeys are no less moving.