For the Sins of My Mother, Paperback

In rural Ireland in 1950, a respectable widow has an affair with a visiting stranger. To conceal her pregnancy, she travels to Belfast, where she gives birth to a baby girl called Marie Therese. She returns to her village life, leaving her daughter to face a life of misery in Nazareth House Orphanage. Cruelly bullied and beaten by the nuns that were supposed to care for her, Marie Therese grows up withdrawn and an outsider. At 17, uneducated and afraid, she is forced to leave the orphanage to live with a manipulative couple that cause her to have a breakdown. Yet, astonishingly in the midst of this turmoil, Marie Therese strives to take control of her life, educating herself and gaining the confidence to establish a nursing career. Determined to find out who she really is, she finally sets out to trace a mother who the nuns told her did not exist. Marie Therese's story is about the resilience of the human spirit and the need we all have to discover who we really are. Nazareth House is one of the institutions currently under investigation by the Historical Abuse Inquiry.