Review: Recommended a beautifully written emotive genealogy story!m
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 20, 2012
What a beautiful story the author, Jacquelynn Luben has written, that takes the reader on an emotive journey through her main character Addie. Addie is an American young woman born to an English mother who dies during childbirth. She is raised by her loving, adoptive American parents. An inheritance bequeathed her brings her to the UK and here starts her genealogical journey to find out her ancestry and whether she has any traceable relatives still living. The story is set back in the 1990's and the time difference is mostly noticed by the ever changing use and mention of that era's latest technology as in word processors. It progresses through letters, diaries, personal contacts and supported by new but supportive friends, Addie finds information of her family. At times this is shocking, painfully upsetting to absolute heart rending & so emotional it reduced me to tears on several occasions. The author intelligently weaves little known, shameful facts of UK law and morality left over from the Victorian Era; as for example, Ada's incarceration for life, with her subsequent institutionalisation into a Mental Hospital in the first half of the twentieth century; for no more than becoming pregnant outside of marriage where the Mental Health Acts of the time needed little more in evidence of a teenage girls moral laxity, where committed, deprived of freedom, a life including a normal sexual life, as well as most tragically deprived of her baby. These events happened to countless young women & girls, so families could save face, which was only eradicated in the late 1970's & 80's, where these middle aged and elderly women were repatriated back into society with lifetime supervision as support. We had one such unknown member in our family & I thank the author for telling their stories as part of the fictitional Addie's family search. Addie also learns of horror and abuse from her family ancestry as well as experiencing relationships with men where the author shows how difficult, yet important it is for a women to listen to her instincts & try make the right choice; as Addie finds it can be a close call between safety and rape. Does Addie have her happy ever after, her family traced, her father, siblings, a lover? For that you need to read for yourself this multi faceted story that this author has so carefully created. I recommend this story in it's entirety, which is well written, with a very good standard of English and I have no hesitation in giving it 5 stars. Just keep a tissue or two to hand!