Description
Blending memoir with social history, Clair Wills movingly explores the holes in the fabric of modern Ireland, and in her own family story.
Clair Wills shines a brilliant, unsparing light into the dark recesses of her family's historyand the history of Ireland. Missing Persons is a stunningly eloquent exploration of how truth-telling, secret-keeping, and outright lies are part of all family storiesindeed, the stories that unite all communitiesand how truths, secrets and lies can both protect and destroy us. Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon
When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. Born in a mother-and-baby home in 1950s Ireland, Mary grew up in an institution not far from the farm where Clair spent happy childhood summers. Yet Clair was never told of Mary's existence.
How could a whole familya whole countryabandon unmarried mothers and their children, erasing