For more than two decades, lawyer Justine Cowan has advocated for the voiceless, challenging some of America's most powerful interests exposing wrongdoing in governments and corporations at all levels. The cases she has been involved in have been reported in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, CNN, Politico, Slate, The Hill and almost all other major news outlets. Justine received her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and her law degree with honors from Duke Law School where she was on the Editorial Board of the Duke Law Journal. http://www.justinecowan.com/
Page-turning and profoundly moving. Her meticulous research has uncovered a strand of British history and she brings it sharply and vividly to life through her personal quest. * Virginia Nicholson * The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames is the gripping true story of a daughter's quest to find the truth about her mother's origins-and, in the process, come to terms with her own life and choices. As she uncovers an increasingly dramatic tale of abuse, escape, and recovery, Justine Cowan must grapple with her complex feelings about this woman who, as she comes to learn, never had a real childhood of her own. A riveting, heartbreaking, and ultimately healing journey of discovery * Christina Baker Kline, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train * Part investigative journalism, part emotional excavation, this breathtaking and heartbreaking book tells the story of a daughter's need to understand her difficult mother. An unexpected and original addition to the mother/daughter memoir oeuvre, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames is both moving and artful, rewarding its readers page after page * Adrienne Brodeur, bestselling author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret and Me * Cowan debuts with an impressive memoir about the unearthing of her deceased mother's secret past and a generations-long cycle of family trauma. This frank account of a real-life Dickensian dystopia captivates at every turn * Publishers Weekly * Well-researched and highly personal, the book presents a fascinating narrative tapestry that both informs and moves. A candidly illuminating debut memoir * Kirkus Reviews * An extraordinary memoir . . . Although telling a deeply personal story, Cowan painstakingly gathers her material as if assembling testimony for a day in court. She is also admirably honest about her fraught relationship with her mother . . . The result is this fascinating, moving book; part history of the Foundling Hospital and the development of child psychology, part Cowan's own story, and part that of Dorothy Soames (the name Cowan's mother was given at the hospital) -- Lucy Scholes * Daily Telegraph *