Author(s): Sandy McCutcheon

Biographies & Memoirs

Sandy McCutcheon, one of Australia's most popular national broadcasters, was adopted into a respectable, well-off family, but it was one in which he never felt at home. His yearning for acceptance was matched by an instinct to rebel, and by frustration with his parents' refusal to acknowledge his adoption. He did not learn the truth about his birth for fifty years, and when he did the circumstances were so convoluted as to defy belief. Eventually he discovered a family with uncanny parallels between its generations, where history has been repeated not once but several times. Sandy's extraordinary story sheds light on things that affect us whether we're adopted or not: on how memory helps shape our sense of self, on the importance of not harbouring resentment, on the way the heart knows things that the mind does not. And the way life never stops delivering surprises . . . The Magician's Son is an unflinchingly honest and poignant account of growing up without a history. First published July 2005.