Tuesday, March 15, 2011

SEARCHING FOR GRACE

Carol Henderson & Heather Tovey
Softcover with flaps • Biography • 304 pages, including colour images
Steele Roberts Publishers • RRP $39.99

This family memoir describes a New Zealand woman’s search for her birth mother in England. It combines Heather Tovey’s vivid memories of a 1920s London child¬hood with the story of two young people whose love is threatened by lies and hypocrisy.


Intimate and often amusing details entwine the lives of those involved, but at the centre of them is the aristocratic, fascinating and obsessively manipulative woman who turns out to be Heather’s mother. When Heather meets her birth family extraordinary facts emerge — and what Heather and Carol find is that appearances are one thing, truth another.
About the authors:

Heather Tovey was born in London in 1911 and raised by an elderly governess. At 18 she secretly married artist Gordon Tovey, who went on to revolutionise the way art was taught in New Zealand schools.

In 1975 Heather travelled to England to pursue her quest to find her family. Her daughter, Carol Henderson, was born in Dunedin in 1935. In 1998 she published a biography of her father, Gordon Tovey.
More at http://carolhenderson.co.nz/

2 comments:

Sandra said...

I'm so glad to see this book on your blog - I loved it and couldn't put it down...mystery romance truth lies drama - it's all there

peg mackay said...

This book was a great compulsive read.

While “Searching For Grace” tells the true story of one woman’s search for her birth mother, many readers may find echoes of their own family’s stories and possibly their own well kept family secrets.

Outwardly Edwardian and Victorian society had strict codes of behaviour, but before modern methods of birth control were discovered, many women from all walks of life had to deal with unwanted pregnancies. Whether readers will sympathise with this High Society mother’s solution to her particular circumstance, or whether they will be shocked, remains to be seen.

What I can say is that you will find this well researched and beautifully written account of a woman’s search over many years for her birth mother, intriguing and hard to put down.

Get hold of this book, and settle down for a roller coaster ride; you will be taken from present day New Zealand back to early 1900s England, a stopover in South Australia, (where Grace was the wife of the Governor of Sth Australia) You will meet a child longing to meet her birthmother, a loyal governess, a beautiful millionairess, several of her lovers, doctors with much to hide, members of the Royal family, a gauche but charming Kiwi artist and other characters and scenes that will seem to have stepped from the pages of fiction. But make no mistake, photographs, letters and papers give ample testament to the authenticity of “Searching For Grace.”

Whatever your circumstances, this book will give you insights into the times, laughter and tears that many of our forebears lived through. You may even find new reasons to be thankful for something you may have taken for granted - your own family.