cover image The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival, and Reconciliation in an American Family

The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival, and Reconciliation in an American Family

Jon Du Pre. Hay House, $13.95 (285pp) ISBN 978-1-56170-674-7

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 own--and 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)