I find it quite strange that, with survivor testimony all over the media and easily Googleable, and the actual report into the homes online, you’re looking for a novel — something invented, which is highly unlikely to be by a survivor.
Think about it — you got pregnant, possibly from rape or incest, we’re sent to a home where you were required to do heavy manual work when very pregnant, were taunted when in labour, and had your baby essentially trafficked to the US, after you signed a form you barely understood. Or you were the child in this situation, used as a guinea pig for vaccine testing, or boarded out to a farm that used you as free labour, or refused any information about your birth parents?
How would you feel about someone thinking your experience sounded like a great, topical idea for a novel, bolting on a heartwarming ending, and making money from it, and readers thinking ‘That’s how it really was’?
Because I can tell you how most Holocaust survivor charities feel about John Boyne’s Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
The report itself is downloadable if you google ‘Mother and Baby home report’. There are survivor groups, but this one — for Magdalen laundry survivors, though, not specifically mother and baby homes, though there was an overlap — is intended to be read by the wider public, and contains an oral history archive.
jfmresearch.com/