Surviving the Shadows is the true story of a young girl brought up in the strict and harsh life of a Catholic orphanage in the 1920s and 1930s, and of her struggle for emotional survival. Told by the nuns she was an orphan, Caroline "Carrie" Marshall set out to search for her roots.

Caroline's monumental struggle against the Catholic authorities in her search for kith and kin lasted over sixty years. Gradually, with the help of genealogists, secrets were prised from the archives and the mysteries began to unravel one bizarre piece at a time. In 1990, Caroline finally received news that...

In Rowland: A Heart of Sunshine, the sequel to Surviving the Shadows, author Caroline Whitehead meets her long-lost elder brother, Rowland Marshall, for the first time in 1991 when he is 72 years old. Rowland had heard about Caroline's existence when he was thirteen, but had been denied any details. He'd searched for her in vain for almost sixty years. Caroline tells Rowland of being raised as an orphan by nuns, how she was forced into war work in 1942, and of her struggle to exist on low wages and wartime rations. Her thwarted political ambitions, emigration to Canada, raising a family,...