Elspeth Sandys was born during the Second World War, the result of an encounter between a married man and a young woman. She was born in Dunedin and spent nearly a year living at The Trudy King Karitane Hospital before being adopted into the Somerville family. Her life with Tom and Alice Somerville was conflicted and difficult, Alice was regularly hospitalised with severe mental health issues, especially after the much older Tom died. Their relationship while he was alive was mysterious and hard for Elspeth to understand, it certainly wasn't conventional. This upbringing scarred Elspeth, and much later in life she sought answers in the search for her birth parents. This is a very, very moving memoir, honest, powerful, and written beautifully. It reminded me of Lloyd Jones's A History of Silence in that it is a literary dissection of the meaning of family, and the way we are affected by the past. I think this is a tremendously good book.