Stranger In My Heart

Stranger In My Heart is about the search for understanding oneself, answering the question “Who am I?” by seeking to understand the currents that sweep down the generations, eddy through one’s own persona and continue on – palpable but often unrecognised. My father fought at the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and then escaped in February 1942, making his way across 1200 miles of inhospitable country to reach China’s wartime capital at Chongqing. Seventy years later I retraced his steps in an effort to understand a man who had died when I was 18, leaving a lot of unanswered questions behind. My book is the quest that I undertook to explore my father’s life, in the context of the Pacific War and our relationship with China. A picture of a man of the greatest generation slowly unfolds, a leader, a 20th Century Great, but a distant father. As I delve into his story and research the unfamiliar territory of China in the Second World War, the mission to get to know the stranger I called ‘Dad’ resolves into a mission to understand how my own character was formed. As I travel across China, the traits I received from my father gradually emerge from their camouflage. The strands of the story are woven together in a flowing triple helix, with biography, travelogue and memoir punctuated with musings on context and meaning.

About the Author :
Mary has written numerous technical and academic articles and is an experienced lecturer and presenter, but this is her first book. She practices as an osteopath in Wiltshire, treating people, horses and dogs. She is a trustee of the Sutherland Cranial College of Osteopathy (SCCO) and is a member of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Association of Animal Osteopaths. She was formerly a marketing consultant, with five years’ experience at what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers, and three years with strategy consultancy P-Four (now part of WPP). She began her marketing career with Cadbury’s confectionery and retains a lifelong love of chocolate. Mary was born and raised on a farm on the edge of the south Shropshire Hills, the youngest of four children. She attended Shrewsbury High School from age four to eighteen. She spent much of her childhood on horseback, which left her with permanent damage to her right eye, a broken nose, a broken kneecap and a broken coccyx. She has been bitten, kicked, rolled on, dragged, and has fallen off too many times to recall, but she still rides racehorses for fun.