Dangerous Heritage – The Background

I first got the idea for Dangerous Heritage after researching the bloodline of a close family relative who had been adopted at birth. I uncovered quite a horror story of illegitimate children born in wartime London, some of whom were abandoned along the way – much as described in the novel. It struck me that ancestry research is highly popular at the moment, and the advent of DNA testing, combined with advanced computer databases, make the construction of detailed family trees quite straightforward and almost instantaneous. However, the problem is that this kind of research is incomplete. It tells us nothing about the lives of those who we might judge for their actions – or the problems that they faced when they took their life decisions. Who are we to make moral judgements when all we know is what happened and not why? And yet family secrets are a sensitive matter, and when a skeleton falls out of a previously unopened cupboard it can cause a great deal of upset. It was with this backdrop in mind that I set out, slightly, to rehabilitate my main female protagonist. The real individual passed away a long time ago, and so I have no idea if my version of her behaviour was correct or not. I suppose those who were adopted should open the tin marked ‘Biological Relations” cautiously, with an open mind, and note the warning in big red letters: buyer beware!! See Synopsis Here