First published 2014
In 1952, teenage Philomena Lee arrives pregnant at Roscrea convent in County Tipperary. The nuns label her a fallen woman but allow her to care for her baby boy for three years. Then the Church removes the child and sells him to American adopters. Officials force Philomena to sign papers promising she will never seek him out. She breaks that promise immediately. For five decades, she conducts a secret search while across the Atlantic, her son does the same. The boy, now called Michael Hess, becomes a prominent Washington lawyer and Republican official under Reagan and Bush. He hides his homosexuality from his conservative colleagues and eventually conceals his AIDS diagnosis. As death approaches, Michael returns to Ireland and the convent where his life began. Both mother and son race against time, each desperate to find the other. Their parallel quests reveal how institutional hypocrisy on both continents shaped their separated lives and the secrets they carried.
Genres: christian-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, 21st-century, adoption, family-drama, catholic
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: parallel-narratives, race-against-time, secrets-and-lies
Setting: Roscrea Convent, County Tipperary, Ireland, Washington, United States
Period: 1952, 1980s
614 pages · Paperback · Shueisha/Tsai Fong Books
Content warnings: child-abuse, homophobia