“Margaret Gibson has plumbed silence and secrets, class and consciousness to produce this exquisite jewel of a memoir. The Prodigal Daughter is as much a portrait of the artist as a young girl as it is a meditation upon the way art can come from calamity—sometimes, as here, producing a final, hard-won kind of grace. This is a poet’s book, with rigorous, beautiful language; indelible images (oh Lord, the old lady in the red kimono!), and insights that took my breath away.”—Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls

“Margaret Gibson’s memoir is a vivid account of a child of the South who feels both estranged from and entrenched in southern culture. She makes us care about this young girl who, with energy and imagination, struggles to find her own mind and heart in a time of civil rights ferment and religious change. Gibson’s prose is impeccable, her portrayal of characters precise, giving the reader a glimpse of historical change through the eyes of a sensitive and insightful girl. The transition from child moving toward adulthood to child assuming responsibility for her own aging parents and a disabled sister is plausible, poignant, and instructive.”
—Elizabeth Cox, author of The Slow Moon

“Margaret Gibson's The Prodigal Daughter is a lovely memoir, rich with family history, vivid details, and a lively sense of storytelling. It is a moving story of self-discovery and awareness within a complex family portrait.”—Jill McCorkle, author of The Cheer Leader

The 1950s and 1960s were years of shifting values and social changes that did not sit well with many citizens of Richmond, Virginia, and in particular with one conservative family, a staunchly southern mother and father and their two daughters.  A powerful evocation of time and place, this memoir—a gifted poet's first book of prose—is the story of an inquisitive and sensitive young woman's coming of age and a deeply moving recounting of her reconciliation later in life with the family she left behind.

Returning us to a Cold War world marked by divisions of race, gender, wealth, and class, The Prodigal Daughter is an exploration of difference, the powerful wedge that separates individuals within a social milieu and within a family. Echoing the biblical Prodigal Son, Margaret Gibson's memoir is less concerned with the years of excess away from home than with the seeds of division sown in this family's early years.  Hers is the story of a mother proud to be a Lady, a Southerner, and a Christian; of two daughters trapped by their mother's power; and of their father's breakdown under social and family expectations.

Slow to rebel, young Margaret finally flees the world of manners and custom—which she deems poor substitutes for right thought and right action in the face of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War—and abandons her fundamentalist upbringing.  In a defiant gesture that proves prophetic, she once signed a postcard home "The Prodigal."  After years of being the distant, absent daughter, she finds herself returning home to meet the needs of her stroke-crippled younger sister and her incapacitated parents.

In this tale of homecoming and forgiveness, death and dying, Gibson recounts how she overcame her long indifference to a sister she had thought different from herself, recognizing the strengths of the bonds that both hold us and set us free. Interweaving astute social observations on social pressures, race relations, sibling rivalry, adolescent angst, and more, The Prodigal Daughter is a startlingly honest portrayal of one family in one southern city and the story of all too many families across America.

About the Author
            Margaret Gibson is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Icon and Evidence, Autumn Grasses, and One Body. She is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut and lives in Preston, Connecticut.