On an Autumn day in 1929, a three-year-old girl went missing from a beach in Lincolnshire. For a few moments, her mother had perhaps looked away, and in that time the child was kidnapped. A few days later the little girl was found, but the mystery of who took her and why she was abducted was never resolved. That stolen child was the mother of author Laura Cumming.
When Cumming learnt the story she was bemused by what seemed to be an extraordinary silence about her mother’s childhood abduction, so she set about trying to find out what had happened. In doing so, she uncovered several other secrets.
This beautifully written family memoir, follows Laura Cumming’s journey as the art historian turned detective – via police reports and newspaper reporting. Read it and venture back to an England between the wars, following the author’s efforts to determine what happened really during the days of the disappearance.
Join Lucinda Hawksley at 1pm on Tuesday 28 May for the Goldster Magazine Book Club, to chat about On Chapel Sands and all things book related.