I’m so pleased that Joffe books are publishing THE LOST GIRLS OF ST ANN’S, previously TRIO. It’s a novel very close to my heart (and a change from my crime fiction). The book, a family saga, is rooted in my experience as an adoptee but I also wanted to reflect the range of stories I’ve heard from other adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents and also to capture the loss that remains for everyone at the heart of adoption. I’m hoping this fresh edition will reach a whole new readership.

Manchester, 1960.
When you’re young, unmarried and pregnant, in a shaming society that will never understand, there’s only one place left to go. St Ann’s mother and baby home. That’s how restless Joan, who dreams of a glamorous new life in the Big Smoke, finds herself shut away with two unlikely new roommates: spirited Megan and timid country-girl Caroline, who fell pregnant on her first time. Abandoned by their families, they have no one to rely on but each other, as they wait out the days before they birth their babies — only to be parted from them forever. On a sultry May night, before the stroke of midnight, three baby girls are born — and given away to three eagerly waiting families. But for Joan, Megan and Caroline, birth is just the beginning. Try as they might to move on with life beyond the convent walls, their mistakes have a way of catching up with them.
When the past comes knocking, the three women are forced to confront the choices they made. Will they ever be reunited with their lost daughters?