Product Description

When she fell pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to the convent of Roscrea, Co. Limerick, to be looked after as a ‘fallen woman’ and at the age of three her baby was whisked away and ‘sold’ to America for adoption. Coerced into signing a document promising ‘Never to Seek to Know’ what the Church did with him, she never saw him again. She would spend the next fifty years searching for her son, unaware that he spent his life searching for her.

Philomena's son, renamed Michael Hess, grew up to be a top lawyer and then a Republican politician in the first Bush administration. But he was also gay and in 1980s Washington being out and proud was not an option. He not only had to conceal not only his sexuality, but, eventually, the fact that he had AIDs. With little time left, he returned to Ireland and the convent in which he was born to plead with the nuns to tell him who his mother was, so that he might see her before he died. They refused.

The Lost Child of Philomena Lee is the story of a mother and a son, whose lives were blighted by the forces of hypocrisy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the secrets they were forced to keep. A compelling narrative of human love and loss, Martin Sixsmith's moving account is both heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30888 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 452 pages

About the Author

Martin Sixsmith was born in Cheshire and educated at Oxford, Harvard and the Sorbonne. From 1980 to 1997 he worked for the BBC, as the Corporation’s correspondent in Moscow, Washington, Brussels and Warsaw. From 1997 to 2002 he worked for the British Government as Director of Communications. He is now a writer, presenter and journalist. His previous books are The Litvinenko File, Moscow Coup: The Death of the Soviet System and two novels, Spin and I Heard Lenin Laugh.

Customer Reviews

How different it all would have been.....
I cannot say I am a fan of "misery lit", but I think this book elevates itself above that terribly titled genre. This is heartfelt, genuine and desperately sad. A story of missed opportunity and almost insurmountable grief. The images that are brought brilliantly to life by Sixsmith are that of 2 people so desperate to find each other and every obstacle put in their way. You see an unloving father doing his best to be a family dictator, you picture the most unfeeling nun burning evidence that they sold children to rich Americans and you most of all you see a woman crushed by the hatred and un-Christian ways of Catholic Ireland who refuses to be bitter.

Michael Hess's life was dedicated to finding his place in this world. To understand where you came from is so vital in understanding who you are and where you can go. He was denied this by brutal backwardness and malevolence of the highest level. Sixsmith's book is long but all the better for that as we get a real insight into Michael and his search. What you are left with at the end is not just a story of missed opportunity but something much greater and wonderfully redemptive. My only warning is to not read the last chapter in public; it literally could break your heart. A superb book.

any mothers son
martin sixsmith,
was on irish radio ( r t e )sept 2009 ,
this true story , covers ireland -england -america ,
an unmarried mother the mother + child home
and then being adopted to an american family ,
v-good read ,
DATHAI MAC GABHANN
DUBLIN IRELAND

don't you just love hypocrisy
This is a difficult book to come to terms with: on the one hand, it is a heartbreaking story of the racket, no less, of illegitimate children sold to American adoptive parents' in their best interests; on the other of a book not as well written as it should be.

There are several, if not more, such stories, some fiction, some not of the disgraceful attitude and actions taken by the Catholic Church relating to children born of unmarried mothers in a convent, of the huge sums of money paid before these children reached their final home. This book tells the wrenching story of one mother's quest to find her 'stolen' son and of the son's quest to find his natural mother. It doesn't make for pleasant reading and it will not spoil the story to say that both quests are unfulfilled.

It is their respective journeys which trouble the reader's mind but the author gives the impression that this is some sort of thriller or, at worst, a docu-drama earmarked for television. He concentrates the more on Michael Hess, the son, born Anthony Lee, a gay Democrat working within the Republican legislature presumably because he was able to follow through with his investigative journalism and maybe because his plight would touch more hearts and minds. But the author's style lets him down in the end - certainly for me, as I couldn't really warm to the man despite his torrid early life.

One day, maybe, somebody will write a more definitive work on the excesses and brutal treatment by the Catholic Church in Ireland of its sinning sheep. One day but my guess that day will be a long time coming. This book doesn't hit the spot at all though it is a journey we would not want to make ourselves.