The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames A Memoir

Justine Cowan

eBook - 2021

"Far from growing up in the wealthy, fox-hunting circles . . .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 ReviewJustine Cowan's remarkable true story begins when she 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 was 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 Des...erted Young Children.It was the environment that shaped a young girl known as Dorothy Soames, who bravely withstood years of physical and emotional abuse —a resilient child whose only hope would be a daring escape as German... more