February 15, 2024
Novelist Brownrigg's (Pages for Her, 2017) memoir explores her relationship with her mostly absent father and his family. After her parents' acrimonious divorce, the author's father moved to a cabin in Northern California, a quintessential back-to-the-lander, with one large difference: he, Sir Nicholas Gawen Brownrigg, was also a British peer. Nicholas grew up in the U.S. with his mother after his own parents divorced when he was a toddler. He never knew his father, who died under mysterious circumstances in Kenya. As an adult, the author began to mend her relationship with her father. A surprising find--the previously unknown family history written by Nicholas' paternal grandmother during WWII--revealed an alternative history of Nicholas' parents' marriage and shed a more loving light on the author's British ancestors. Brownrigg delves into the facts and fictions that shaped her family for generations, weaving the newly discovered revelations with the copious correspondence her father kept up during his lifetime and her own evolving understanding of her father. The result will especially resonate with those whose own family histories contain secrets.
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