"This . . . fascinating and unflinching memoir from the daughter of former Alabama governors George and Lurleen Wallace . . . explores Peggy Wallace Kennedy’s journey from a little girl defending her father as a “segregationist” and not a “racist” to an adult grappling with his civil rights legacy and seeking racial justice." - NPR.org, Best Books of the Year
"If an enduring face of the pain and promise of the Civil Rights movement is Rep. John Lewis (D.Ga.), then Peggy Wallace Kennedy has become a symbol of racial reconciliation. In speeches and interviews over the past few years, the diminutive daughter of segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace looms large as an authoritative voice in acknowledging a painful past as part of a larger effort to move our nation forward." - The Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart
"In her new memoir . . . [Kennedy] recounts what it was like to grow up as the child of a man the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once called "the most dangerous racist in America." Her book is an unflinching look at how her father's politics warped his personal life and clouded his daughter's conscience . . . With startling candor, Kennedy takes on her own denial as well as her father's." - CNN
"Wallace Kennedy, who avoided the spotlight for years, is now using her voice to promote racial healing." - NPR
"George C. Wallace, perennial Alabama governor and presidential candidate, was Donald Trump’s John the Baptist, and so as a public record, this memoir by Wallace’s anti-racist daughter can read like prophecy more than history. But it’s as a sometimes painful personal accounting of life under Wallace that The Broken Road is most searingly revelatory, especially to those of us who lived through her father’s reign of civic doom and racial carnage. Peggy Wallace Kennedy’s story of the havoc-making ‘family man’ is delivered with style, sly humor, and an admirable measure of dispassion. And it seems like an act of grace for Peggy to have ended up on the right side of the Selma Bridge, holding the hand of Congressman John Lewis. May our country end up so fortunate." - Diane McWhorter, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning CARRY ME HOME: Birmingham, Alabama—The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
"The daughter of George Wallace, the virulently segregationist Alabama governor,…Kennedy relates the story of the historic civil rights march in Selma and her attempts to make reparations… [and] recounts how in both word and deed her father, late in his life, repented for his past." - The National Book Review’s 5 Hot Books list
"An intimate portrait of a daughter’s struggle to grapple with a father whom she loves but whose politics she abhors and her extraordinary odyssey to find her own voice. Peggy’s story, imbued with atonement, redemption, and healing grace is especially important now, when our country is more divided than anytime in the last fifty years." - Kerry Kennedy, President, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
"This brave and sobering memoir by the daughter of the notorious segregationist seeks to elucidate her father's character while still holding the man to account." - Shelf Awareness
"The redemption Peggy offers in The Broken Road is the hope that pain is not where it will end. . . . [It is] is a multi-layered memoir, searing in its candor." - The Bitter Southerner
"A masterpiece of personal memoir . . . with first-rate writing and searing honesty, Peggy Wallace Kennedy shares the story of a Southern soul steeped in tragedy and shame, revelation and redemption. To read it is a long-awaited gift." - Rev. Doug Tanner, Founding Director, The Faith & Politics Institute, Washington, DC
"The temptation when faced with a biography of a famous and nearly contemporary figure like George Wallace is to believe you already know all about that . . . But here, Peggy Wallace, daughter of the governor, has told us the inside story . . . [She] has devoted a large portion of her life to making amends, one might say, for her father’s actions . . . She is also outspoken about what she sees as similarities between her father’s political era and the present." - The Tuscaloosa News
"The Broken Road is the story of a family struggling with an impossible legacy. . . . White southerners who reject the racist teachings of their elders often feel a life-long need to understand and to explain. That need propels The Broken Road. For these white southerners, there is the tension between expressing our differences with our kin but not rejecting them as loved ones or holding them out for ridicule, not using them as props. How do we elevate ourselves without tearing them down?" - Birmingham Watch
"In her powerful new memoir, Kennedy looks back on the politics of her youth and attempts to reconcile her adored father with the man who coined the phrase "Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever." - The Montgomery Advertiser
"This remarkable memoir by Peggy Wallace Kennedy, tender, heart-breaking, searing in its honesty, is in the end a story of redemption—the journey of the daughter of George C. Wallace from the segregationist shadow of her father into the light of racial reconciliation. Anybody who knows Peggy Kennedy, or who reads these pages, will understand immediately the anguished authenticity of her passage. Civil rights leaders such as John Lewis ultimately forgave George Wallace for the sins of his past, just as they have embraced his daughter as a sister in the quest for human rights. The Broken Road is the story of how that happened—a needed reminder in these times that love and simple decency can be more powerful than their opposites." - Frye Gaillard, author of A HARD RAIN: AMERICA IN THE 1960s
"The Broken Road seeks not only to answer the ‘why’ of George Wallace’s behavior, but also to reconcile his legacy of bigotry and hatred, and subsequent redemption, with his daughter’s own legacy of a lifetime spent trying to right the wrongs he perpetrated." - New York Journal of Books
"A scorching look at Wallace as a failed father, husband, friend—and as a purveyor of racism." - Denton Record-Chronicle
"A powerful memoir about the politics of [Wallace Kennedy’s] youth as well as intimate stories about her famous father and family." - KY Forward
"[A] thoughtful, evenhanded debut . . . Kennedy’s astute memoir also serves as a probing record of politics and racism in the South." - Publishers Weekly
"Shows poignantly the toll [George Wallace’s] actions took on his family and draws parallels between his tactics and those of Donald Trump. . . . A fair-minded memoir and portrayal of an exceptionally divisive civil rights-era politician." - Kirkus Reviews
"Readers will find out more about George Wallace than they ever could have learned otherwise, and will be transported back to the heat, hatred, fear and some notable heroics of the early civil rights era. The judgment on Alabama’s fiery leader cannot rest solely on one source, but by creating her perspective, Peggy Wallace Kennedy offers a reasonable opening for re-examination." - BookReporter.com
"Absolutely, The Broken Road is a book of a thousand emotions. Anger, disgust, outrage—of course, you may remember those. Keep going: Deep sadness rings this tale, but a sense of satisfaction may be found, too, as pieces of a 50-plus-year-old puzzle fall into place. Also, in author Peggy Wallace’s hands, the story of her mother is told with steely inspiration, while other passages hold a tinge of droll Well-Bless-Your-Heart zingers that are delightfully tucked in. . . . Love, politics, the tumultuous ‘60s, current events, it’s all in this can’t-miss biography. The Broken Road is paved with grace." - Bookworm
"Peggy Wallace Kennedy’s monumental memoir, The Broken Road, is a roadmap for Southerners seeking separation from depravity defining the region." - The Clarion-Ledger / Hattiesburg American’s “Mississippi Books Page”
"The Broken Road, by Peggy Wallace Kennedy, is a powerful memoir that doesn’t gloss over her father’s faults and the suffering he caused black citizens." - AL.com
"The Broken Road is a heartfelt book about a daughter wanting to save her father’s reputation." - The Humanist
"It’s an unlikely memoir in which the daughter of the segregationist politician George Wallace walks hand-in-hand with civil rights legend John Lewis down the streets of Selma, Alabama." - Plough’s “Editor’s Picks”
2019-09-15
A segregationist's daughter recalls growing up on the wrong side of history in her debut memoir.
Kennedy, who lives in Montgomery, Alabama, makes it clear that she has no plans to whitewash the legacy of her father, four-term Alabama governor George Wallace (1919-1998), who proclaimed: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever." The author writes that when Wallace denied any role in the brutal assaults on civil rights marchers in Selma, on the day known as Bloody Sunday, he resembled "Pontius Pilate washing his hands" of guilt. However, she tries gently to correct a few misperceptions of her father. When Wallace renounced his views on segregation after an assassination attempt left him a paraplegic, many observers saw it as another crass political move, but the author notes that in private conversations late in life, he was sincerely "ashamed and regretful." She also shows poignantly the toll his actions took on his family and draws parallels between his tactics and those of Donald Trump. Before Wallace persuaded the Alabama legislature to change the law to allow him to serve more than one term as governor, he had his wife, Lurleen, run as his stand-in despite a recent diagnosis of uterine cancer; she died after 15 months in office. The author has suffered from chronic depression and received electroconvulsive therapy for "reactive psychosis caused by stress" even as she's tried to ease others' pain through civil rights activism. She doesn't say whether the ECT helped or how she evolved from loyal daughter to social justice advocate—did she have a Damascene moment?—two of many subjects on which she seems to repress as much as express. Kennedy tells her story well, but she leaves the impression that—whether because of her Southern good manners or because some subjects are still too painful to talk about—her history involves more than she can yet say.
A fair-minded memoir and portrayal of an exceptionally divisive civil rights-era politician.
