An Affair with My Mother

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 Mother tells 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 Mother is a beautifully and tenderly written account of a remarkable relationship that has survived seemingly intolerable pressures.