A gripping memoir and revelatory investigation into the history of the Foundling Hospital and one girl who grew up in its care - the author´s own mother.
´Extraordinary ... A fascinating, moving book: part history of the Foundling Hospital and the development of child psychology, part Cowan´s own story, and part that of Cowan´s mother´ LUCY SCHOLES, TELEGRAPH
Growing up in a wealthy enclave outside San Francisco, Justine Cowan´s life seems idyllic. But her mother´s unpredictable temper drives Justine from home the moment she is old enough to escape. It is only after her mother dies that she finds herself pulling at the threads of a story half-told - her mother´s upbringing in London´s Foundling Hospital. Haunted by this secret history, Justine travels across the sea and deep into the past to discover the girl her mother once was.
Here, with the vividness of a true storyteller, she pieces together her mother´s childhood alongside the history of the Foundling Hospital: from its idealistic beginnings in the eighteenth century, how it influenced some of England´s greatest creative minds - from Handel to Dickens, its shocking approach to childcare and how it survived the Blitz only to close after the Second World War.
This was the environment that shaped a young girl then known as Dorothy Soames, who was left behind by a mother forced by stigma and shame to give up her child; who withstood years of physical and emotional abuse, dreaming of
escape as German bombers circled the skies, unaware all along that her own mother was fighting to get her back.