The Prodigal Brother: Making Peace with Your Parents, Your Past and the Wayward One in Your Family

If you don't have this book, get it! In the all-important arena of inter-personal relationships, Sue's book is at the top of my all-time list. It is that good, and it is that important. In The Prodigal Brother, Sue writes from a wealth of experience and shares her story in a way that draws us, page after page, into stunning, life-changing truths about our own story. Sue reveals for us the big picture of what relationships are all about--our growth as God-favored sons and daughters. From chapter to chapter, the reader recognizes in Sue's life, as well as in his own, that God is working for our freedom by proving to us how capable He is. He is the necessary ingredient for every relationship we have, providing the understanding and love and compassion and forgiveness needed by everyone. Sue's book is an adventure of revelation and freedom and delight that makes sense of the journey we're all in, and which affirms for us that we are, after all, God's workmanship. That's great news, and I give The Prodigal Brother my highest recommendation.

For anyone who has struggled with forgiveness, this is the book for you. Not only does the author give a new and fresh look at the story of the prodigal son, she also shares a path to forgiveness that I've never heard before. I have many pages dog-eared. But pages 182-184 floored me and God has used this author's story of forgiveness to melt my heart. I've been able to see some difficult people through God's eyes. I highly recommend this book & this author.

The previous reviewer missed the title by a mile! The book's title doesn't refer to Sue's brother--it refers to HER. Sue takes a look at the parable of the prodigal son from a different angle: it's the story of a family. Her messed-up brother represents the prodigal son and she sees herself as the older brother. She calls him "the prodigal brother" because he was far away from home in his own way. Sue is very honest about her role in a dysfunctional family. She tells the truth about how she saw herself as standing apart from her family because her parents' focus was on her drug abusing, alcoholic brother. There was no party thrown for her because she was the "good" kid; all the family resources were spent on her brother. This isn't just a book for people who had/have a "bad" kid in the family. It's for anyone who needs help in finding a way to forgive. No formulas here--just an encouragement for people to see what they went through from God's point of view. This is a deeply personal account of a journey with wonderful insights.

This book's title phrase, "prodigal brother," doesn't refer to the intended reader but rather to a troublesome sibling --- the wayward one who has wreaked havoc on the family dynamics. Author Sue Thompson had such a brother, her only and younger sibling, the kind who could have been a child candidate for the "Dr. Phil" show: full of fear and anger...trouble from the day he was prematurely born. "After a lengthy separation from his mother he was handed to her as though there was nothing wrong --- but in fact, everything was wrong and he never recovered...Who can understand why one child is broken and another endures? I believe my brother's little spirit was simply fragile from the beginning." With great honesty --- but from a distance --- Thompson weaves her own story through the book. She summarizes personalities and family patterns but rarely transports us to a scene. "My brother was completely without self-control...His language was shockingly foul, his friends were alarmingly gross, his hygiene was disgustingly indifferent. I remember my parents yelling and pleading and arguing with him, and I watched him win every time. Even when they seemed to win, they lost, because while their intentions remained steadfast, they just couldn't seem to follow through." Yes, Thompson always refers to him --- Danny --- in the past tense, as he died "a few years ago," in his early forties, of heart disease exacerbated by "decades of drug and alcohol abuse." Her mother has also died, and her father lives far away in the fog of Alzheimer's. These principal players being absent, the book's subtitle, "Making Peace with Your Parents, Your Past, and the Wayward One in Your Family," refers more to making peace with the memories than to working out ongoing relationships with difficult prodigals or parents who have unintentionally caused great pain to the "faithful" child who stayed the course, prayed for peace, and longed for attention. "How should I have loved my brother? I still don't know. It's hard to imagine how I might have loved him rightly because I was not mature enough to understand the complexities of love." In sorting through painful memories, Thompson, who has a master's degree in clinical psychology, looks at her own culpability in the family dynamics, placing herself in the indignant, angry, self-righteous role of the "older brother" as portrayed in Jesus' prodigal parable. The problems she raises are familial. The answers she gives are spiritual. Citing Scripture and biblical life-stories, such as Hagar and Elijah, she lays out a journey from immaturity to maturity, from denial to grief over what might have been, to gratitude, and eventually hard-wrought forgiveness. There's a lot of thought-provoking material here for adult children who've been wounded by well-meaning families. Though Thompson never hears anyone say, "I'm sorry," she finds healing and offers every reader hope of the same. --- Reviewed by Evelyn Bence