It's hard to know what to wear when you're meeting your mother for the first time . . . ' Caitriona Palmer had a happy childhood in Dublin, raised by loving adoptive parents. When she was in her late twenties, she established contact with her birth mother, Sarah, and they developed a close attachment. But Sarah set one painful condition to this joyous new relationship- she wished to keep it - to keep Caitriona - secret from her family, from her friends, from everyone. Who was Sarah, and why did she want to preserve a decades-old secret?An Affair with My Mothertells the story of Caitriona's quest to answer these questions, and of the intense, furtive 'affair' she and her mother conducted in carefully chosen locations around Dublin. By turns heartwarming and heartbreaking,An Affair with My Motheris a searing portrait of the social and familial forces that left Sarah - and so many other unwed Irish mothers of her generation - frightened, traumatized and bereft. It is also a beautifully and tenderly written account of a remarkable relationship.

Author Biography

Caitriona Palmer lives in Washington, DC, where she writes for the Irish Independent and has done radio work for RTE and the BBC. She is married to a fellow-journalist, with whom she has three children.