Duplicity: My Mothers' Secrets

Donna's birth parents were infamous con artists at the heart one of the US's biggest crime investigations of the 1960's. Donna Freed was six years old when her sister casually revealed that she and her siblings were all adopted, a subject her parents refused to discuss. The revelation fractured Donna's sense of identity. The death of her tricky yet treasured adoptive mother died left Donna feeling exposed, her life un-witnessed without a mother to look over her. When she became a mother herself, Donna felt compelled to track down her birth mother. Trawling through records of the now notorious Louise Wise Adoption Service, many previously redacted, she uncovered an explosive and salacious story, one of the biggest true crime investigations to grip the USA in the late 1960s. Her (real) parents had faked her mother's death by drowning to benefit from a massive life insurance payout, a manhunt ensued... This vivid memoir about motherhood and identity, explores the essence of what it is to be a mother and the fundamental truth of nature vs nurture.