Andrew Craft

Lost, Stolen Or Strayed Andrew Craft

Ruth is banged up in a bin in South London (again) and tortured by an agonizing secret. Matthew, her eldest son, is a new dad working for crazed director Norman 'fat boy' Schneibel at a deadly dull political TV show in New York. At the insistence of her psychiatrist, Ruth summons Matthew to London where she reveals that in 1958, when unmarried mothers were legally labeled "moral Imbeciles", she gave up a baby girl for adoption. The guilt has ravaged her ever since. Through their diaries, we accompany Matthew on a wild goose chase, battling bureaucracies, half-truths and his belligerent boss, as he tries to track down his half-sister before Ruth succumbs to terminal cancer. Ruth's journal, often abandoned and returned to, takes us on her journey through the smog of grey trousered London in the 50's and beyond, while madness, alcoholism, and the deterioration of her marriage become the cost of keeping her secret safe. Racing against time on a desperate mission to make his mother's last days a little less wretched, Matthew learns more about Ruth and himself than he bargained for, while the truth is elusive, blurred and buried between the lines of a famous epic poem.