Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory

Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2016

As Dad slowly leaves us, I try to haul him back – from the bottom of cardboard boxes and forgotten trunks; from letters buried in desks; from books I previously had not known about… It’s not just Dad I want to stick together again. This is an exorcism. And a ghost hunt. Rebuild him. Rebuild me.

Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm.

As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story, and soon finds herself in a far more consuming place than she had bargained for.

Tom Carew was a maverick, a left-handed stutterer, a law unto himself. As a member of an elite SOE unit he was parachuted behind enemy lines to raise guerrilla resistance in France, then Burma, in the Second World War. But his wartime exploits are only the start of it...

Dadland is a manhunt. Keggie takes us on a spellbinding journey, in peace and war, into surprising and shady corners of history, her rackety English childhood, the poignant breakdown of her family, the corridors of dementia and beyond.

As Keggie pieces Tom - and herself - back together again, she celebrates the technicolour life of an impossible, irresistible, unstoppable man.

A beautiful, poignant, irrepressible memoir about love, loss, uncovered history and the layers of memory that make up a life.

‘…it’s full of tenderness, and her writing is nimble and handles emotion well… “I’ve been in thrall to Dad too many years,” she writes. “It’s been hard to grow out of the need to impress. Be more fearless. Be wilder. Be braver. Be different. Think differently. Surprise! I knew Dad was out of the ordinary and I wanted to be too.” With the publication of this original, moving book, she has succeeded.’ – The Guardian