Family Secrets

Product Description

On a Liverpool railway platform a heartbroken mother hands over her eight-year-old illegitimate son for adoption... A vicar brings to his bank vault a diary - sewed up in calico, wrapped in parchment - that chronicles his longing for other men... A one-year-old daughter is committed to an institution by her family, but is never visited once in her last seventeen years... In Family Secrets Deborah Cohen explores the extraordinary choices British families made in the past to protect their good name. Whether it is hiding an adopted son's origins or the tangled attempts to prevent a divorce, Family Secrets exposes how we dealt with our shame - publicly and in our hearts.