Jane Johnson Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

An essay by Jane Johnson about her discovery of a surprising secret in her own family.

I was forty-four years old before I discovered my mother's long-hidden secret. I needed my birth certificate because I was getting married, not in the UK, but in Morocco, to a Berber man I had met and fallen in love with there while researching my first historical novel, THE TENTH GIFT, and where the local bureaucracy demanded a mountain of paperwork. I had to provide a copy of my passport, my medical records, my police report (thankfully blank), a declaration of my 'celibacy' – to prove I was single and available for marriage – and my birth certificate. I don't think I'd ever seen the latter, and when the certified copy arrived from the General Records Office and I examined it, I thought they had made an error. Not only was the certificate dated 1966, but the surnames of my parents were both listed as 'Johnson'. Whereas, I knew my mother's maiden name was proper Cornish.

Before taking up the error with the authorities, I called my mother: a relative rarity. We had never shared a close relationship and had been estranged for several years earlier in our lives. My mother was what one might call 'a difficult woman'; I probably inherited from her my love of a good argument, my determination and the toughness to stand ...