Book excerpt: Haunting, poignant memoir of the author's quest to discover the shocking truth about her past, spanning three generations of a fascinating but flawed family. Anna grew up accepting that her parents were glamorous but mysterious figures, who had both died by the time she was seven. It was only when she was in her thirties that she discovered they had both committed suicide. As she began to search for the truth about her parents, she uncovered details about their fascinating and incredibly divergent backgrounds: her father's family can trace their ancestry to King James II. Her mother came from a Welsh mining family. They met in 1950s literary London and fell in love. But a year after Anna was born, her mother was dead. The book explores the nature of loss, exile, betrayal and Anna's own deep-rooted instinct to refuse the horrors of her past and transcend the legacy of her parents. This is a compelling, moving story of uncovering the past in order to reclaim the future.