Book excerpt: For the Love of My Mother is the tragic and uplifting story of one Irish mother and her son. Born into a life of poverty and detained at the tender age of two for begging in the streets, Bridget Rodgers proceeded to spend the next 30 years of her life locked away in one institution or another. The orphanage came first but after being raped and falling pregnant, she was sent to a home for unmarried mothers where she gave birth, had her son taken away from her and then was sent to one of the infamous Magdalen Laundries. And that really is only the beginning of the story. A truly gripping tale told by the son she thought she'd lost for ever, it is a story of triumphing over poverty, a tale of hope when there seems to be none, and a tribute to a mother's love for her son.