'A page-turner with a mystery to solve, and a meditation on what it means for a child to know their parents' - Cathy Rentzenbrink
'An exceptional, entirely unpredictable, real-life thriller' - Michael Mansfield
'An astonishingly original memoir about truth, identity and the ethics of science' The Telegraph
'Gripping' The Times
WINNER OF THE BRIDPORT PRIZE FOR MEMOIR
Renowned scientist Professor Michael Briggs was many things:
A Space expert at NASA
An adviser to the World Health Organisation
A successful Big Pharma executive
But Michael Briggs had a secret.
A scandal broke out in 1986 when research he conducted was revealed to be compromised. Patients were also claiming that a pregnancy test he pioneered had caused devastating birth defects. Soon after his fall from grace, Briggs was dead, struck down by a mystery illness in a foreign country
Briggs left behind a long list of publications, patents, and inventions. But he also left behind hundreds of people who believe they are victims of his negligence and who are still fighting for justice to this day.
And he left someone else: his daughter, Joanne. After decades of wondering who her father really was, Joanne decided to investigate for herself. In hypnotic prose, she uncovers the secret that shaped her father's entire life and made his story more fantastic than any science fiction. As she discovered, Briggs's greatest invention was himself.
Hardback | 288 pages | Published June 2025
