There is more to Frances Sinnett's secret pain than the loss of her children - including the author - to an orphanage. Battalions of sorrows begin when her grandfather at 11 years old is imprisoned on a hulk in 1865. Then comes Gallipoli and the Somme. Her father's war does not stop when the guns fall silent. The family is ripped apart by trauma, alcoholism, violence and betrayal at home. State intervention makes matters worse. Meticulous research by historian Golding finds more than 30 Sinnett children in institutions over five generations. Has the cycle been broken at last?