'Secrets Never to be Told' is an extraordinary story, compellingly told, which unravels a century and a half of family secrets. It reveals how being born illegitimate shaped the lives of two women - one of them, the author. Starting with a letter revealing a mystery inheritance, the author goes on a five-year quest taking her from Victorian Cambridge to modern Vancouver.

She uncovers how her cousin Jessie emigrated to Canada, one of thousands of female domestic servants exported as 'surplus' women before the First World War. Woven alongside the contemporary detective investigation on the trail of one immigrant's untold story, is that of the author's strange 1960s childhood of social isolation in a Midlands city, obsessed with a world seen through TV - and with the Beatles.