Sandra Danby’s new novel Ignoring Gravity is the first of a new series about a journalist who inadvertently finds a new career: researching people’s adoptions and reuniting lost relatives. She explains why Rose Haldane, her journalist heroine, becomes a detective.
“When I first decided to call Rose Haldane an ‘Identity Detective’, a lot of my friends said ‘oh I don’t like reading crime fiction’,” remembers the Yorkshire-born author. “After that I wondered if I should give the series a different name, but I couldn’t think of one that, to me, encapsulated what Rose does. So I decided to risk the genre confusion and stick with ‘Identity Detective’.”
In Ignoring Gravity Rose, a journalist, discovers she is adopted. After the initial shock, she sets out to uncover the truth of her birth and to find her birth parents. At times she is blinkered to how her determined search is affecting her widowed father John and her sister Lily. She researches her birth as if she was researching a subject for work and seeks out fact. She does consider her dreams, and she dreams a lot, but though they spook her she rejects them. She wants proof, evidence, documents.
The Rose Haldane series looks at the complex subject of adoption, with each tale focussing on a different role in the adoption mix: late-discovery adoptee [like Rose who discovers as an adult that she is adopted], birth mother, birth father, foundling, adopted siblings, mistaken identities. The next book in the series, Connectedness, tells the story of a birth mother who gave her baby up for adoption when she was a struggling art student. Now an internationally successful artist, Justine Tree is interviewed by journalist Rose Haldane and asks Rose to find her baby. This is a transitional book for Rose. She is still working as a journalist but finds herself emotionally drawn to the mystery of Justine’s plight.
Rose becomes a detective of identities. She has never solved a crime, visited a crime scene or interviewed a murder suspect. She researches family history and adoption secrets, trying to unite relatives separated by adoption. It is an emotive subject surrounded by secrets and lies. Rose, as an adopted child, realizes her name is different, her sister is not genetically her sister, her medical history is unknown. In Connectedness, Justine Tree has told no-one she had a child. So in every press interview she is asked how being childless has affected she creates her art. So she lies. Until she trusts the truth to Rose … but is she telling her the whole truth?
Buy Ignoring Gravity at Amazon here.
Connectedness, will be published in 2015. To make sure you don’t miss it, sign-up for Sandra Danby’s newsletter here.
http://www.sandradanby.com/about/
What readers are saying about Ignoring Gravity
“This contemporary tale of sisterhood and identity is immediately engrossing. Sandra Danby writes with great empathy and wit.” Shelley Weiner, author of The Audacious Mendacity of Lily Green
“Drama? Check. Suspense? Check. Romance? Check. Will-they-won’t-they? Check. Great twists? Check, check, check! I am pleased to say this story has them all and then some.” Kerry Burnett @ Kerry’s Reviews Blog
“This is the perfect summer read; I read this sprawled in the garden, under the sun. It really is the perfect mix of drama, family, love, discovery and friendship.” Lizzy Baldwin @ My Little Book Blog
LINKS:
Watch Sandra Danby talk about the inspiration for Ignoring Gravity: http://youtu.be/TcOzrhGRc48
Watch the book trailer for Ignoring Gravity: http://youtu.be/jpzWKR4gx8I
Twitter: @SandraDanby
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/sandradan1/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6563021.Sandra_Danby
mylittlebookblog 
I really enjoyed this book and though Sandra wrote about the adoption and searching for your true parents really well.
It’s a wonderful book and very insightful for someone that has never come contact with adoption on a personal level 🙂 very well written and conveyed I thought
Very good review, make me want to check out this series. Maybe I will.
YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD wonderful series by an even more wonderful author 🙂
I came here looking for a good mystery read, I really didn’t expect to find this. Being adopted, I can really relate to this book! Thanks for the review. I recommend Nancy Boyarksy’s The Swap, it’s not nearly as intense as this one sounds, but it’s a great mystery!