The Prodigal Father [Paperback]

Jon Du Pre (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2000

The Prodigal Father is the story of how one American family turned its bright expectations into crushing disappointment and then, ultimately, victory of spirit. The Du Pre family's story is told by the middle of three children, Jon. As Jon comes of age he lives out his boyhood dreams. He marries a beauty queen. He and his wife have two healthy children. He becomes a successful television newscaster in a major city and builds his young family's dream house. Unbeknownst to anyone but Jon, something is wrong. Fear and rage from his childhood have lingered, and threaten to destroy the seemingly perfect life he has created. Jon makes a terrifying pivotal decision -- to seek out the cause of his confusion and bitterness. Jon must descend into the foreboding other world of homelessness to find the man who abandoned him and his brothers 21 years earlier.

Through determination and ingenuity, Jon finds his father and brings him to account. The discovery that arises from their confrontation enables Jon to forgive his father, to be freed from the shackles of his past and to return to his family ready at last to be the husband and father he aspired to be.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Moved by footage of a homeless man in a Boston snowstorm, Fox TV news anchorman DuPre embarked on a midlife quest to find his own indigent father. A "hero" in his son's young eyes, Robert DuPre had been a bright, successful FBI agent turned well-respected civil rights attorney in South Carolina, the kind of father who "never missed a chance to praise his boys." But these idyllic beginnings gradually turned dark. The author effectively traces his dysfunctional family history through uncomfortable afternoons in strangers' living rooms while his father visited with one of his mistresses in the bedroom; cold nights on the curb in front of the YMCA, waiting until midnight for his father to pick him up from early-evening basketball practice; and his father's drunken rages in the makeshift basement of the family "dream home" for which there was never quite enough money to finish building. Luckily, a few interested coaches and teachers helped the author through high school, junior college and Brigham Young University, where he discovered a love for journalism and met his (soon-to-be Miss Utah) wife. But happiness at home and success at work never completely silenced DuPre's inner demons. He felt compelled to confront his father with his questions, his anger and his fear that his father's fate would somehow become his ownAand ultimately found release in the encounter. Because this is the son's story, not the father's, the title parable is less apt here than that of a Hero's Journey; this is the gripping tale of DuPre's own expedition into the dark forest of childhood to slay the three-headed monster of fear, anger and guilt, and to return healed and whole. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 285 pages
• Publisher: Hay House (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1561706744
• ISBN-13: 978-1561706747
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,538,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the American ANGELA'S ASHES!, May 2, 2000

By 

Devon Marcus (So. Cal.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prodigal Father (Paperback)

I read this book from cover to cover without putting it down. It is an immensely entertaining, moving, and inspirational book about a seemingly perfect man (handsome, successful, great family) who is tortured by the memory of his childhood, and of his lawyer father, who left the family when the author was 14 and then ended up homeless, by choice. In order for the author to deal with his life, he has to search out his long-lost father and find out, "Why! " Anyone who's ever been a family member will relate to this marvelous book, which should be a bestseller, if there's any justice in the world.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the father-his side, May 16, 2000

By 

"johnmol" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Prodigal Father (Paperback)

The subject of Jon Du Pre's book, his father, Robert Owen Dupre [one word], aged 73, is still a homeless person in Tucson, Az. Bob Dupre is presented by his son as a complex, sometimes friendly and helpful and sometimes out of control and neglectful father. Jon characterizes his post childhood relationship with Bob as first, for most of his adult life, feelings of chaos and some devestation and then ultimately discovering strong feelings of forgiveness, gained through finding Bob and facing his feelings in a forecful and sometimes angry but very brief reunion in San Diego in the mid 90's. Bob remained homeless, mostly in Tucson, Az., and was not again ever genuinely contacted by Jon.

For Jon, the issue he says is PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Jon does not use the word child abuse, but he describes a great deal of it, stressing childhood memories of chaotic and poverty stricken times and broken relationships, and especially from his Dad, neglect.

It is not as popular as it used to be to discuss child abuse openly, and some therapy groups now deny [mostly falsely I believe] most claims of the more serious kinds of abuse. It is thus in the new century [unnecessarily I think] difficult for people like Jon to tell the entire truth. Jon uses amorphous and non-controlled narrative segnments to highlight his memories and feelings, but the feelings and some of the memories come through very powerfully.

Homelessness also produces much PTSD. Jon's father faces surgery for two cataracts next month at the local VA hospital in Tucson. I bought Bob a begal and coffee yesterday at Brugers Begals at Congress and Stone in downtown Tucson and tried to get a special residency for Bob at a local shelter because of his eye problems. I failed. Read the book; its a very good one!

John Patrick Molloy

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A riveting book, May 21, 2000

By 

Dorean C. Kimball (Concord, NH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Prodigal Father (Paperback)

I found this book difficult to put down possibly because I was searching also to see why Jon's father became the person he did.