Darling Baby Mine

by John de St. Jorre (Contributor)

A heartbreaking memoir tackling the mistreatment of women and the stigma of mental health in the 1940s. DARLING BABY MINE is a compelling read recalling John's extraordinary search for his mother. In a story that couldn't happen today, John eventually finds his mother interred in a mental asylum where she's been kept for thirty-five years diagnosed

Genres: Nonfiction

284 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2016

About the author

John de St. Jorre was born in London and educated in Britain and Singapore. "I spent two years in the army, much of it in Malaya during the Communist insurgency, followed by a degree at Oxford. During my last year at Oxford, I was recruited into MI6 by my medieval-history tutor. [By age 24] I had quit MI6 – I had spent most of my time working in Africa – and begun to drift doing odd jobs to survive but enjoying the freedom of the era. It was, after all, the 1960s and it seemed the right thing to do. ...after freelancing in central Africa, the Observer hired me. I was deflected by covering political crises in Africa and the Middle East, and wars, notably the Nigerian-Biafran conflict, the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and the Iranian Islamic revolution."
Turning freelance in New York, he divided his time between journalism, book writing, lecturing, and writing and editing. He has written articles and reviews for The New York Times and its Sunday Magazine, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New Yorker, Town and Country, The Times, The Guardian, Punch, The Literary Review, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and Departures among others.

He lives with his wife and family in Newport, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Kristen]

The author is a good friend of a work colleague and after she mentioned him once in conversation & his interesting life story, she let me borrow his book. This is probably something I wouldn't have read otherwise, but found quite captivating as the author traced his life and searched for his mother.

[Maher Trad]

The consequences of war and how individuals lived it. Enthralling at every level

[Lesley]

A lovely book. It's a picture into a bygone world with a bittersweet ending.

[Maureen]

Touching story of a man’s search for the mother he never knew.