How far would you go for the missing? When Clair Wills was in her
twenties, she found out she had a cousin, Mary, who she had never
met. In 1950s Ireland, Clair's uncle had got his lover Lily
pregnant and gone to England, leaving her and the family farm - his
inheritance - behind. Lily and Mary ended up in Bessborough Mother
and Baby Home, not far from her grandmother's farm where Clair
spent happy childhood summers, with no idea that Mary existed. The
truly shocking thing about this story is how ordinary it was. It
was repeated in families across Ireland for decades: the last
mother and baby home closed in 1998. How could this happen? How
could a whole family - a whole country - tacitly agree to abandon
unmarried mothers and their children to such a stark fate, even to
their death? And how, Wills asks, could her grandmother live with
herself? To retrieve the missing, and make a new inheritance, Wills
searches across archives and nations, from rural West Cork to
Suffolk woodlands, from Paddington pubs to the factories of
Massachusetts. But there are no easy resolutions, and there is a
difference between a secret and a truth unspoken. Every family has
its missing persons. Here is their story.
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