‘Need. Crave. Fear. Lovely monosyllabic verbs which perch like hungry gulls on top of the iceberg floating in a cold sea.’

Adoption is a complex, challenging business. For those who are adopted, its emotional ramifications run deep, half-hidden or buried, a source of insecurity because questions remain unanswered and family photos are missing.

Catherine Chanter’s A Child in the Middle does justice to the topic’s tangled roots and the depth of feelings woven through them. A skilled professional who works with troubled children and sits on adoption panels, Catherine is herself adopted. Armed with decades of understanding and experience, at the age of fifty she embarks on an emotionally charged journey to find her own birth mother. And so, begins a detective story of false starts, hopeful leads, and blind alleys which take her to Ireland and Canada. We stay at her side as she speaks of her need to be whole and to know herself by knowing her parents and her past. Interleaved are delicate, poignant vignettes of her germinating, potting, and caring for foxglove seeds, the metaphor slipped in gracefully from chapter to chapter, season to season. The plants must put down roots and flourish. So must Catherine.

This book is for everyone involved in the process of adoption professionals, adoptive parents, adopted children. It speaks to you all from a base of acknowledgement, wisdom and honesty.

From the author of The Well and The Half Sister.