More praise for
THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER

“The Bishop’s Daughter is a celebration of Paul Moore’s life and of Honor Moore’s honesty. Paul is a sympathetic figure, more human and fallible and somehow more noble than if we had simply been left with the picture of him as the powerful and renowned bishop of New York. . . . One feels that both Paul Moore and his daughter have been set free by this book. There is no shame left, and neither is there blame.”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“The Bishop’s Daughter is both a probing autobiography and forthright reflection on a man who, for all his flaws, inspired his daughter to understand him. Eloquently summing up her father’s inner life, she comes to realize that his power derived from a shadowy existence that both tormented and inspired him. . . . The Bishop’s Daughter . . . tells us much about the willingness of daughters and sons to confront complex emotional truths. We owe our fathers nothing less.”

—Newsday

“Moore backed away from his gilded pedigree . . . to become a champion of the poor, a civil rights crusader in the Johnson era, and ultimately Episcopal Bishop of New York. But the life of this charismatic reformer was also a reliquary of secrets, which his eldest daughter, poet and biographer Honor Moore, opens up with grace and urgency in her memoir. . . . Prose as emotionally resonant as a confession. It’s brave to open up old wounds; braver still to help them heal.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine

“An indelible portrait of a charismatic religious leader. . . . 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.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The Bishop’s Daughter is an eloquent argument for speaking even the most difficult truths.”

—New York Times Book Review

“A powerful memoir of life with an accomplished but secretly tortured father. . . . Poet and playwright Moore, an attentive, sensitive narrator, performs an intensive, sometimes painful genealogical dig on her parents’ backgrounds, their courtship and marriage, their work together in the church and their private lives, including many interviews with friends and male and female lovers of her father. . . . A moving prose poem about what it means to be spiritual, sexual and human.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“[A] galvanizing portrait. . . . 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.”

—Booklist, starred review

“The Bishop’s Daughter is an unsparing portrait of a glamorous but elusive father and his daughter’s search for the truth about his secret life and conflicted loyalties. What makes Honor Moore’s memoir so arresting is the effect of the author’s cool and penetrating gaze on her beloved subject. Before the life and book end, the god-like hero of New York’s crisis years has climbed down from his pulpit to reveal the hidden tenderness, joys and fears of his all-too-human heart.”

—Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind

“Eros and charisma. Are they linked? Or does the one masquerade as the other? Honor Moore offers a startling evocation of the malleability of sexual identity, her father’s and her own, amid a vivid recollection of American church life at its high tide in the mid-twentieth century. The millions of New Yorkers (and others) whose lives were touched by Bishop Paul Moore will read this book in wonder.”

—Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography

“The Bishop’s Daughter is much more than another daughter’s story; it evokes a time, a way of life, a habit of spiritual and political idealism. It reminds us of who we are as Americans, who we have been, who we really always were. Honor Moore speaks with the truest kind of love, both honest and compassionate, and allows us to accompany her—and she is an elegant and eloquent guide—on her fascinating journey of discovery and understanding.”

—Mary Gordon, author of Circling My Mother

“What is the nature of memoir, and how does it intersect with history? Honor Moore’s rich and beautiful new book, The Bishop’s Daughter, offers some answers to these questions. Moore’s thoughtful investigations encompass the intimate history of her own family and the philosoph-ical history of the Episcopal church; the great cultural network of the Protestant tribe, the ethics of twentieth-century marriage, and, finally, and most powerfully, the nature of passion. This is a gorgeous book, full of experience, wisdom and caritas.”

—Roxana Robinson, author of Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life

“In part because it reveals an iconic and titanic figure, and in part because its author is a gifted writer with a capacious soul, The Bishop’s Daughter must be a remarkable book. Spiritual, psychological, political and quirky, it is celebratory and revelatory too. . . . It movingly relates the inevitably bittersweet saga of the dashing Yale man, who finds faith, goes to war and lives, woos and weds the princess of his dreams; then sallies forth with her at his side to slay dragons and, sadly but truly, have nightmares. It is most memorably a frank, loving, faceted and fully realized portrait of an inspired rebel, visionary priest and passionate man who deserves no less.”

—Washington Times