Shadow Baby

Born in Carlisle in 1887, brought up in a children’s home and by reluctant relatives, Evie, with her wild hair and unassuming ways, seems a quiet, undemanding child. Shona, born almost seventy years later, is headstrong and striking. She grows up in comfort and security in Scotland, the only child of doting parents. But there are, as she discovers, unanswered questions about her past. The two girls have only one thing in common: both were abandoned as babies by their mothers. Different times, different circumstances, but these two girls grow up sharing the same obsession. Each sets out to stalk and then haunt her natural mother. Both mothers dread disclosure; both daughters seek emotional compensation and, ultimately, revenge.

Reviews of Shadow Baby

"A brilliant exploration of choice and consequence" Mail on Sunday "Enthralling… readers will plunge happily into the kind of family story for which Margaret Foster is celebrated and which she executes so well" — Anita Brooker Spectator "An unfailingly intelligent novel, full of lucid observation of a phenomenon, mother-love, too often seen through a gilded haze of false feeling and wishful thinking… Forster is a fine storyteller" Sunday Times "Intricate, romantic and full of suspense" Observer "An excellently funny, moving novel… a text for our times" — Auberon Waugh Independent