A Sunday in Purgatory

Poetry. The poems in A SUNDAY IN PURGATORY combine memoir, reflections on aging, sexuality, and wrestling with the tension that exists between being part of a famous American family and wanting to be an individual, separate from family history. Morgenthau writes, "In these precious days I dress my private demons in scribblings to come out from behind the shadows that have darkened my long and privileged life…in a purgatory where I wait to pass through the open gates."

2016 Pulitzer Prize winner Peter Balakian calls these poems "crisp, elegant forays into memory both personal and cultural…His surgical examinations of self and his unflinching stare into mortality define the unique and honest voice of this remarkable first book of poems."