Traveling with Pomegranates:
A Mother-Daughter Story
In this wise and intimate dual memoir, Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, chronicle their travels together, and offer their distinct perspectives as a fifty-something and a twenty-something, each on a quest to redefine herself, and rediscover each other.
Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel together to sacred sites throughout Greece and France. Sue, newly aware of aging, caught in a creative vacuum, longing to reconnect with her now grown daughter, struggles to find the wherewithal to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel. Ann, just graduated from college, heartbroken and benumbed by the classic question about what to do with her life, grapples with a painful depression. The intimacy of travel and the wondrous nature of the places Sue and Ann visit bring forth each woman’s internal struggle and provide fertile terrain for reflection and inspiration. In voices candid and lyrical, this modern-day Demeter and Persephone explore the richly symbolic and personal meaning of an array of inspiring figures and sacred sites in Athens and Eleusis, Paris and Rocamador, and places in between. They also give voice to a moving transformation of that most protean of human connections: the bond of mothers and daughters.
A poignant and compelling book about feminine thresholds, spiritual growth, and the relationship between mothers and daughters, Traveling with Pomegranates is both a revealing self-portrait by a beloved author and her daughter, a strong new voice, and a momentous story that will resonate with women everywhere.
