Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs

A simple need for her birth certificate leads Jane, aged 19, to a devastating secret: she was adopted as a five-week old baby in London in 1947. Stunned, Jane is sworn to secrecy and forbidden to search for her biological family - a promise she honours until after her adoptive parents die.

A heart-wrenching family crisis and a longing to know her origins leads Jane into a life-changing quest in Salisbury, now Harare, Johannesburg, London, Berlin and Sydney. Seeking clarity about her genes, she also longed to know why she had been adopted. She knew her adoptive parents to be well-meaning, so who had imposed the secrecy conditions on her adoption and why? And who were her adoptive parents?

Almost four decades later while in London, Jane meets Paul, her new half-brother, and sees her first photograph of their mother, Phyllis. Sadly, Phyllis, had already passed away. Phyllis was a well-educated elegant, exuberant woman who went to finishing school in Belgium, worked for the Bank of England before her marriage, bred Dalmatians and yet inexplicably and tragically abandoned Paul when he was just 8 weeks old. Why?

During WWII Phyllis became a British soldier. In a story reminiscent of Honeysuckle Weeks' role in Foyles War, the much loved BBC television serial, Paul tells Jane that Phyllis became a driver of high ranking officials while living in Ashby Castle, close to Bletchley Park where the enigma code was broken. Later she risked her life to spy on the Germans in Arnhem in the Netherlands just prior to the 'Market Garden' airborne invasion in 1944 during WWII.

Jane was skeptical - how could this be true? But there were many more surprises to come. Delighted to have found each other, Paul and Jane begin to retrace Phyllis's life together. The social upheaval and trauma of the first half of the 20th century and the turmoil in the traditional roles of women and motherhood becomes all too clear.

An award-winning book about an era of secrecy, guilt and shame, Secrets, Spies and Spotted Dogs interweaves the raw emotion of adoptee discovery, the heart-pounding threads of WWII espionage at Arnhem, and the author's poignant search for truth and identity.