Short and sweet post from me this week….
I blogged about my Prologue Views last year. In case it doesn’t cover this year’s topic, it can be helpful when you can’t find a way to show more backstory to your characters.
The rule in general is, if you’re going to have a prologue, there had better be an epilogue. I think one of my books has an epilogue, but no prologue; not sure how I got around that rule!
Molly's Musings/Kenzie's Korner 
I agree that sometimes it’s most effective to begin with a traumatic event, especially if overcoming that traumatic event is the main inner conflict of the present-day story.
I had an editor suggest one for my 1st pubbed work, but told me I also needed the epilogue, to properly ‘bookend’ the story. I don’t use them all the time; only when the story seems to call for it.
If the information is interesting and important to the story, then prologues and epilogues work for me.
Thanks for stopping by Kate:) Yeah, I have no problems with the whole pro/epi debate either.