Book description
Adoption is one of the great, untold stories of our recent past. It
is a truly epic tale of loss, guilt, identity, family feuds, reunion
and redemption. It is a subject, until very recently, surrounded by
secrecy and taboos.
This is the heart-warming true story of a little girl's adoption in
the 1950s and her search, nearly forty years later, for her birth
mother. When mother and daughter meet, Sue thinks she has finally
reached the end of her journey. Then Sue discovers she wasn't the only
baby her mother gave away ...
Weaved throughout is the vivid, emotional history of adoption in the
UK. Drawing on a wide range of intimate personal experiences, it
outlines the forces that shaped 20th century adoption practice, from
baby-farming, the stigma of illegitimacy, incest and the bastardy
laws, to children taken by force, the Magdalene laundries, mass
emigration schemes without parental consent, to modern day adoption
practices, buying babies from abroad, sperm donor fathers and tearful
reunions on Trisha.
Sue Elliot is a television executive and speechwriter, whose writing
appears regularly in national newspapers such as
The Guardian
. She has a special interest in social policy and adoption, and has sat
on adoption boards.
