Part of Me
A compelling and emotional novel that asks: What do you owe to a child you let go?
A widow in her sixties, Geraldine is financially secure, happy, and about to marry her second husband, William. She’s come a long way from being a motherless fourteen-year-old giving a baby up for adoption—but over the decades, she’s made a special effort to support vulnerable girls as a way of compensating for her lingering guilt.
Miles away in London, Beth has endured a painful divorce and the death of her adoptive mother—and now faces kidney disease. A transplant means waiting indefinitely for a stranger to die . . . unless someone volunteers as a living donor. She will not consider putting her three children at risk or burdening them with the truth, but with both her adoptive parents gone, could the time be right to track down the birth parents she knows nothing about?
When biological mother and daughter finally meet, the emotions that accompany the reunion are complicated further by haunting questions: Is Beth driven by selfishness as much as—or more than—a desire to connect? Will Geraldine’s urge to help Beth by being tested as a potential donor jeopardize her new life with William? What does she owe, and to whom?
Thought-provoking and absorbing, this novel explores the meaning of family, the nature of guilt and regret, and the conflicts raised by the miracles of modern medicine.
Vivien Brown
Vivien Brown was born and grew up in Middlesex and still lives there today, with her husband and two cats. Following an early career in banking and accountancy, the lure of working with words instead of numbers became too strong to resist and she went on to spend the happiest years of her working life reading with the under-fives in children’s centres and libraries while writing short stories for women’s magazines in her spare time. She went on to train as an adult education creative writing tutor and started writing novels, specialising in women’s fiction with domestic drama and family relationships at its heart.
She is a past winner of the annual Mail on Sunday ‘Best Opening to a Novel’ competition and reached the shortlist again three years later, and was wined and dined on both occasions alongside the famous judges, Fay Weldon, John Mortimer, Sue Townsend and James Herbert, all sadly no longer with us.
Vivien is a fellow and honorary secretary of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists (SWWJ) where she oversees writing competitions and social media, and is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and a reader for its New Writers Scheme. She is also a regular tutor at the annual Swanwick Writers’ Summer School.
Away from writing, Vivien loves playing with her grandchildren, watching and occasionally taking part in TV quiz shows, is an avid reader and reviewer of women’s fiction, and enjoys the challenge of both solving and compiling cryptic crosswords.
