MY INSPIRATION FOR SEARCHING FOR MY DAUGHTER

Back in 2020 when I began writing Searching for my Daughter the greatest world concern was a new virus called Covid 19. How could I have known that by the time the book was published, the world would be facing the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the displacement of millions of innocent people fleeing the terrors of war?

In fact, the book was inspired by the experiences of my uncle, who spent five years in a prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War. On his release he worked as an intelligence officer for the Control Commission, set up to monitor the movement of displaced people between the Allied sectors in Germany, as well as seeking to intercept Nazi criminals trying to evade justice.

When he told me about his work and about some of the characters he met, I knew it was a story that had to be told. I chose to tell it through the experiences of a mother and daughter. I am the mother of two daughters, and cannot bear to imagine what it would be like not knowing whether either of them was still alive.

His memories helped me appreciate, for the first time, the immensity of the crisis of the 1930s and 40s when eleven million died in concentration camps and a further five million were displaced by persecution and war. It is heart-breaking to see this happening all over again, eighty years later.