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“Far from growing up in the wealthy, fox-hunting circles she had always
suggested, her mother had in fact been raised in a foundling hospital for the
children of unwed women.” — Editor’s Choice, The New York Times Book Review
“Extraordinary … fascinating, moving.” —The Telegraph
“This emotional and transatlantic journey is a page-turner.” — Editor’s Pick, Amazon
Book Review
“Book groups will
find as much to discuss here as they have with The Glass Castle by Jeannette
Walls, and Educated by Tara Westover.” — BookList
Recommended
by The New York Times, The Saturday Evening Post,
Amazon Book Review, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Publisher’s
Weekly, Kirkus and more, Justine Cowan’s remarkable true
story of how she uncovered her mother’s upbringing as a foundling at London’s
Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young
Children has received acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.K., it
has been featured in The Mail on Sunday, The Daily Mail,
The Daily Mirror and The Spectator. The
Telegraph calls it “extraordinary and Glamour magazine chose
it as the best new book based on real life.
The story begins when Justine found her often volatile mother in
an unlit room writing a name over and over again, one that she had never heard
before and would not hear again for many years – Dorothy Soames. Thirty years
later, overcome with grief following her mother’s death, Justine found herself
drawn back to the past, uncovering a mystery that stretched back to the early
years of World War II and beyond, into the dark corridors of the Hospital for
the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children.
Established in the eighteenth century to raise “bastard” children to clean
chamber pots for England’s ruling class, the institution was tied to some of
history’s most influential figures and events. From its role in the development
of solitary confinement and human medical experimentation to the creation of
the British Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts, its impact on Western culture
continues to reverberate. It is the reason we
read Dickens’ Oliver Twist and enjoy
Handel’s Messiah each Christmas.
It was also the environment that shaped a young girl known as
Dorothy Soames, who bravely withstood years of physical and emotional abuse at
the hands of a sadistic headmistress—a resilient child whose only hope would be
a daring escape as German bombers rained death from the skies.
Heartbreaking, surprising, and
unforgettable, The Secret
Life of Dorothy Soames is the true story of one woman’s quest
to understand the secrets that had poisoned her mother’s mind, and her
startling discovery that her family’s fate had been sealed centuries before.
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