Duplicity

A powerful, poignant and pacey adoption memoir which reads like a thriller' New York Times. Donna's birth parents were infamous con artists at the heart one of the US's biggest crime investigations of the 1960s. Adoption, Family and Fraud... When her adoptive mother died in 2009 Donna Freed set out to track down her birth mother. What she discovered was truly shocking - she was the daughter of a pair of infamous con artists, at the heart of one of the biggest true crime stories to grip the USA in the 1960s. Previously redacted records from the infamous *Louise Wise Services in New York revealed that Donna's mother (27, Jewish and single), her father (40, Catholic, married with 4 children), had hatched a plan to defraud an insurance company and run off to Spain to raise Donna. Further investigation revealed that in 1967, Donna's mother, Mira Lindenmaier, faked her own death in a drowning accident off City Island in the Bronx for the double indemnity insurance money. Donna loved her tricky, unconventional adoptive mother, but was now keen to meet her birth mother and find out how and why her parents abandoned her. How would she feel towards Mira, her 'real' Mum. How has becoming a mother herself impacted on her feelings towards her two mothers? Gripping and fast-paced, this extraordinary memoir is also incredibly moving tackling fundamental questions about motherhood and identity, nature vs nurture.

Donna Freed, a native of New York, is a writer and translator. She has lived in London since 2005. She writes for The Oldie and presents the Radio Gorgeous podcast. She appeared on the Today Show in January last year, prompted by an article in the New York Post which has revisited Miriam Lindenmaier's story from time to time over the years.