Previously Published Book
Biographic
Memoir
Anne's story is one of lost generations.
She was abandoned by her mother at ten months of age, and from then on she lived a life of abuse and gross neglect in the Mercy Orphanage for the Poor, and at the hands of her Lebanese father's extended family.
In the Coory family's mind, Anne's greatest shortcoming was her demonised Italian mother, Doreen Frandi, and for this reason she was treated as an imbecile and sexually harassed from childhood to her teens. Added to that, Anne was separated from her two brothers while living in the orphanage according to strict rules of gender segregation when boys turned five. After marrying in her teens and giving birth to four children in quick succession, Anne struggled to come to terms with her tormented past while at the same time making a vain attempt at living a normal life. Eventually Anne's marriage failed and she barely managed to avoid a mental breakdown. Two decades later, Anne embarked on what would be fifteen years of research and travel to find her Italian relatives and in the process tried to make some sense of why so many women in her Lebanese and Italian families became defeated mothers.