Danae Woodward is always my first and best reader.
This story is an imaginative history of sorts; I’m indebted to many books, documentaries, articles and papers for grounding it in actual events. Even if The Christie Affair had never come to fruition, I would be enormously glad to have read The Adoption Machine by Paul Jude Redmond. It’s a beautifully researched, gorgeously written, hauntingly personal book and I encourage anyone moved by Nan’s story to read it. Other books that were invaluable to me include: The Light in the Window by June Goulding; Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment by James M. Smith (Dr Smith was generous with responses to my questions, recommended June Goulding’s memoir and put me in touch with his equally generous colleague Claire McGettrick); The Great Influenza by John M. Barry; Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade; An Autobiography by Dame Agatha Christie herself (if you’ve never read it, you have a great treat awaiting you); and, of course, my stack of Christie’s detective novels, in particular Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, The ABC Murders, Death in the Clouds, Peril at End House, Crooked House and Endless Night, as well as her short story ‘The Edge’. For various period details and anecdotes I was helped by too many articles and academic papers to list, chief among them: ‘When the World’s Most Famous Mystery Writer Vanished’ by Tina Jordan (New York Times); ‘The Mysterious Disappearance of Agatha Christie’ by Giles Milton (HistoryExtra.com); ‘Unmarried Mothers in Ireland, 1880–1973’ by Maria Luddy; ‘Unmarried Mothers and Their Children: Gathering the Data’ by Dr Maeve O’Rourke, Claire McGettrick, Rod Baker and Raymond Hill; and the aforementioned ‘The Lady Vanishes’ by Matthew Thompson (The Lineup).
The stories from Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Not Grow Old helped me imagine Finbarr and Chilton. And I will forever stand in awe of the brave women in Steve Humphries’ arresting documentary Sex in a Cold Climate. My thanks, love and admiration to Brigid Young, Phyllis Valentine, Martha Cooney and especially Christina Mulcahy.
And thanks most of all to David and Hadley. I would spend a hundred years looking, and go everywhere in the world, to find you.
About the Author
Nina de Gramont lives with her husband and daughter in coastal North Carolina, where she teaches Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her interest in writing about Agatha Christie began in 2015 when she first learned about the famous author’s eleven-day disappearance. Christie’s refusal to ever speak about this episode particularly intrigued Nina, who loves the fact that someone who unravelled mysteries for a living managed to keep her own intact. The Christie Affair is her third novel.