A medium-sized book with a soft cover, mostly blue in effect, with the title in pink. There are 232 pages and the twenty chapters all have informative titles. There are two collections of photographs, all of interest as dated and sometimes distant views of those involved in the quest of Tina for her mother.

The Foreword was written in 1997 by two of the staff members of Barnardo's, New Zealand, and is a reminder that many children who came under the care of Barnardos knew little or nothing of their family background during childhood, and sought their roots in later life with the help of carers who so often could only apologise for the faults of their predecessors.

The author's evocative poem, entitled Istanbul, and written in 1963, is followed by a prologue outlining her illegitimate birth at the beginning of World War Two, immediate admission to a Barnardo's 'show home' where she spent thirteen years among 'unfortunate objects of charity to be cared for but never truly loved'. This 'complete deprivation' was never relieved by any answers she got to enquiries, and she took into adult life a sense of injustice and abandonment. Illness, and self-pity, finally induced her to search for her mother, but she was aged fifty two before she found out the real truth; writing about it proved a powerful catharsis.

The first sentence of chapter one provides an important element in this story: 'If nothing else, my mother gave me the gift of life and bestowed uon me the Turkish name Fatma Suleyman.' She immediately relates that her mother was considered too young to look after her and after nine months in and between various institutions, including Dr Barnardo's Homes, she was admitted to Farm Hill where she remained for thirteen years - sufficient time to remember it well, and the detailed quaint but caring regime, under Miss Simcox, with the apparently inappropriate name of 'Mother'. She describes the regime as tyrannical, but also as safe, secure, and not unhappy. A surreptitious look at her own personal folder in which she was described as 'affectionate' provoked disbelief, and her disenchantment with the lack of motherliness in her designated 'mother' predominated by the time that she left, aged thirteen. Nevertheless, she had progressed well throughout her years there, made friends with other members of the staff and her contemporaries, developed the ability to play tunes on the piano, and was successful enough in the Local Education Authority School to warrant further education in a 'newly opened Barnardo Boarding School'.

The Princess Margaret School was founded by Dr Barnardo's Homes in 1951 as an experiment to help thirteen year old Barnardo girls obtain the General Certificate of Education. Four of the 'cottages' at the southern end of the one-time Boys Garden City at Woodford Bridge, Essex, accomodated eighty pupils, and the schoolhouse was nearby. It provided a good education in small classes, plenty of sports, and a friendly boarding school existence, in which the author flourished, progressed with her piano playing, and made good friends. By contrast, her retrospective dislike of Farm Hill increased.

The coincidence of meeting a nurse at the BGC hospital who had cared for her as an infant, and recognised her Turkish name, provoked her to enquire of Barnardo's details of her past, and to receive a letter, which is reproduced, presumably in full; it relates that her father was a British soldier who served abroad, and her mother a refugee from Turkey, who returned there, and contained the phrase 'There is no-one with whom we can put you in touch'. This devastated rather than comforted her, disturbed her concentration with possible visions of her mother, lowered her GCSE results, but did not prevent her passing a Grade Five RSM Piano examination.

She left the Princess Margaret School and her friends there with much sadness, and pictures herself as relatively shy and withdrawn at the Barnardo Residential Hostel near Woodford, to which Barnardo's had sent her to attend the nearby Pitman's College to learn shorthand and typing. This she did very successfully, in the company of a Barnardo friend, but she also felt shame for her Barnardo background, and her name, which, by a process of phonetic encouragement, she changed from Fatima to Tima, and from thence to Tina, which lasted. Regardless of her expressed loneliness in association with her feelings of deprivation, she had good friends, made many more, and displayed considerable ability in music, and also with the rather specialised art of composing pictures with a typewriter, examples of which occur in the book.

She writes at length about her relatively lonely bed-sit life in London, and thoughts of finding her mother that led to her to apply to Barnardo's again for information, preparatory to making a visit to Turkey. Miss Dyson( Notes 9), a senior member of the Barnardo staff, proved very helpful with family names and details. After a fair experience of London life, purchase of a useful motor scooter, and a stint of being a waitress, she earned enough to undertake her trip to Istanbul, and took two of her waitress friends with her.

The next two chapters cover a year in Turkey during which she gains a deep affection for the country of her mother, meets real friendship and help with her search, using the family name, only to discover that her mother never returned to her homeland after the author's birth.

Back in London, and apparently beset with the possibility of becoming depressed, she not only meets up with her friends from Farm Hill, but also returns there to meet old friends and staff, and spends much time around her office jobs researching in Somerset House until she finds evidence that her mother married 20 years earlier, and she has the name and occupation of her husband to help with her search, but the addresses she obtained had been vacated many years earlier; her life appears to be failing, as does her quest, and she sets out on a two year working trip to Australia.

A diversion to see a friend in New Zealand leads to other friendships, and to the man with whom she falls in love, marries, and has a family of her own; her loneliness is replaced by a loving husband. Only after much medical support, including the diagnosis and management of thalassaemia, a blood disorder inherited from her mother, and obstetrical treatment to maintain her pregnancies, was she able to settle successfully to bringing up her own family.

The desire to find her mother continued, but the failure of enquiries made through organisations as far away as England, and the preoccupation with the education of her own children and expansion of her own involvement with music, took natural precedence, as did the diagnosis and successful treatment of breast cancer.

It was in 1992 that the quest was taken up again while visiting England, this time by a Barnardo's after-care social worker, the organisation having by then developed considerable experience in such work following the Adult Adoption Act in 1985. Some six weeks after her return to New Zealand a letter arrived relating the fact that her mother had died some eleven years earlier, and she writes at length, and with difficulty, about the ultimate anguish of having lost her, and the comfort and recovery through the support of her family.

The last five chapters of the book are given to a most readable, moving, and tender description of the author's visit to Listowel, in Ireland, to trace her mother's later life, death, and burial there, and so complete her grieving, and in doing so, her lifelong quest.

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