Publication date: April 2, 2024
Print Length: 210 pages
Previous Publications:
- Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain (2017)
- Dublin 1916: the Siege of the GPO (2009)
- The Best are Leaving: Emigration and Post-War Irish Culture (2015)
- That neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War (2007)
SYNOPSIS
In Missing Persons: or My Grandmother’s Secrets, Clair Wills seeks to uncover the fate of a unknown cousin who, as an illegitimate infant, was placed in an Irish mother-and-baby-home in the 1950s along with her unwed mother.
As she digs deeper into her family’s hidden secrets, Wills questions why her grandmother was willing to relegate her son’s illegitimate child to one of the homes only to discover that her grandmother herself almost suffered the same fate when she became pregnant before she married Wills’ grandfather.
As an award-winning academic specializing in Irish history, Wills explores how her own family history fits within Ireland’s tolerance of the homes where an estimated 57,000 children were born and 9.000 ultimately died. As she seeks to understand the forces that shaped her grandparents’ world and the choices they made, Wills sets her family history within the broader context of the Irish war of independence, the poverty of the farm-based economy and the power of the Catholic Church
REVIEWS AND AUTHOR INFORMATION
West, Cait, “Missing Persons: Interview with Clair Wills” Tears of Eden, November 7, 2024, https://www.tearsofeden.org/blog/missing-persons-interview-with-clair-wills.
McBride, Emily, “Can you Understand Ireland through One Family’s Terrible Secret?” The Nation, December 10, 2024. https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/clair-wills-missing-persons-ireland/.
Scholes, Lucy, “Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets – behind a Wall of Silence.” Financial Times, January 23, 2024. https://www.ft.com/content/33bdf19e-b051-4180-9fcf-0461d8b94970
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What does Wills’ family history reveal about the political, economic and religious forces that caused so many members of her mother’s Irish family to become “missing persons?”
What are the parallels Wills draws between the choices available to her grandmother and herself? In what ways were her decisions similar and different from those her grandmother made?
Wills search to discover what happened to her cousin Mary takes place in the larger context of the shameful history of the Irish mother and baby homes. Why did it take so long for the truth regarding these homes to be revealed?
Wills contends that we continue to be haunted by the gaps in the stories we are told about the past. Why Did Wills’ family hide the story of Lily and her daughter? What did Wills come to understand about her grandmother after she uncovered her family’s secrets?
