Cath Staincliffe decided to write about adoption after tracing her Irish birth-parents and learning that she had 7 living siblings. The result is Trio, a book that explores the many aspects of adoption. In the story Joan, Megan and Caroline share the same room at St Ann's Home for Unmarried Mothers in Manchester, each one giving birth to a baby girl on the same May day.
Trio covers so many of the aspects of adoption to the thoughts of the young mothers who left the home without their babies, the lives they lived bearing the consequences; the lives of the women who adopted the babies, their backgrounds and the bonds formed with the babies and the lives of those babies who grew up and wondered what their origins were.
The book is not sentimental but it is clearly written with a lot of empathy for all concerned. My only complaint was that to fit everything in, essentially nine women's unique stories meant there were big jumps in time which could be a bit distracting.
