Honor Moore

The Bishop’s Daughter

A Memoir

“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.

Honor Moore is the author of three poetry collections and of The White Blackbird, a life of her grandmother, the painter Margarett Sargent. She lives in New York City and teaches at the New School and Columbia University.

May 2008 / hardcover / ISBN 978-0-393-05984-7
6 1/8" x 9 1/4" / 352 pages / Memoir