Family Conscience

“Family Conscience is an extraordinary memoir. Tracing the various manifestations of conscience in his Protestant Midwestern family over several generations, Barbour illuminates the way in which ‘family values,’ whether adopted or resisted, can persist and shape behavior for decades. At the same time, his book is an acute inquiry into—and demonstration of—the ethics of writing about one’s relatives. It is an impressive achievement.”

—G. Thomas Couser, Professor Emeritus of English, Hofstra University

“‘The unexamined life is not worth living’—so said Socrates. In Family Conscience, John D. Barbour re-examines several of his long-standing intellectual concerns—solitude, ethics, spirituality and its precarity—in light of his most intimate personal relations. The nature and challenges of conscience hold his narrative together, and the result is a memoir that draws readers deeply into personal reflection on the meaning of their own lives and those of others. Socrates would approve.”

—Craig Howes, Professor of English, University of Hawaii

“Drawing on detailed interviews, journal entries, letters, and photographs, John Barbour intricately mines his family’s past for clues about how moral conscience develops. From host homes in India to work camps in Germany, this generational memoir investigates the places, events, conversations, and relationships that form our personal understanding of right and wrong. With compassion and curiosity, Barbour eloquently investigates how war, marriage, parenting, suicide, religion, community, and vocation affect the moral dimensions of one family. But Barbour is also acutely aware of the mutability of memory; woven through the book are his interrogations of his own writerly motives and his family’s mixed response to his observations. The result is a lucid, wise, and engaging memoir that offers a moving example of why searching for truth is both a fraught and necessary endeavor.”

—Kaethe Schwehn, Associate Professor of Practice in English, St. Olaf College

“Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Family Conscience provides a genealogy of the values of four generations of an accomplished and morally aspiring clan. As honest as it is tender, Barbour’s study is rife with illuminating reflections on the nature of conscience considered as an amalgam of reason, desire, and history. Life’s moral complexity is brought home with engaging stories and the author’s willingness to give voice to relatives with conflicting perspectives on family history.”

—Gordon Marino, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, St. Olaf College