Showing results by author "Katharine Quarmby" in All Categories

Norfolk, 1813. In the quiet Waveney Valley, the body of Mary Tyrell is staked through the heart after her death by suicide. She had been under arrest for the suspected murder of her newborn child. Mary leaves behind a young daughter, Hannah, who is later sent away to the Refuge for the Destitute in London, where she will be trained for a life of domestic service. It is at the Refuge that Hannah meets Annie Simpkins, a fellow resident, and together they forge a friendship that deepens into passionate love.

In this poignant book, the writer and investigative journalist Katharine Quarmby describes the 20-year search for her Iranian birth father and her own adoption history. She links this narrative to the wider story that she uncovered during her search - of the many missing Iranian military fathers, who disappeared after the Iranian Revolution, but who are still sought by so many Iranian love-children in Britain today. Her narrative is a meditation on the importance of both birth and adoptive families.

A journalist is haunted by the ghost of a story - and a woman - she can't leave behind. A story so powerful that it haunts the dreams and waking hours of all that have lived through it. A genocide in which the West failed to save the innocent. This is the story of aftermath - of how the dead we fail, haunt us - and how we must return, to lay their ghosts and set ourselves free.