Father Melancholy's Daughter, Godwin's novel about a motherless young woman and her Episcopal priest father is a good place to start with Gail Godwin. There is a sequel to that novel, Evensong, which picks up the story seven years later. Margaret, the daughter has gone on to become a priest herself. Both novels have such a calm and pure tone, and show Godwin's sure hand at storytelling.

A bad place to begin with Gail Godwin would be 1978's Violet Clay, an earlier novel. The plot seems sketchy and the characters cardboardish. The writing shows the promise to come, but the author just hadn't hit her stride yet, although she would with the publication of A Mother And Two Daughters in the early 1980s.