Secrets of Strangers

Lisbon, 1944:
Andrea Aspinall, plucked out of academia by British intelligence so that her mathematical knowledge might help in the hunt for atomic secrets, disappears under a new identity in Lisbon, where such secrets are easily bought and sold.
Karl Voss, already experienced in the illusions of intrigue when he arrives in Lisbon, is an attache at the German Legation, though he is secretly working against the Nazis to rescue Germany from annihilation…

'"I live at the end of a gravel road at the top of a valley consumed by bush. My husband is here, and my three girls. But the bush swallows them up like the road." I wrote those words at the kitchen table in 1983. A letter to the mother I'd never met. But how do you convey your life in a few sentences when almost every memory is missing?' Barbara Sumner grew up in a family filled with secrets and lies. At twenty-three she decided she had to find her mother. Remarkable, moving, beautifully written, Tree of Strangers is a ripping account of a search for identity in a country governed by adoption laws that deny the rights of the adopted person.