The heartbreaking true story of an Irishwoman and the secret she kept for 50 yea
rs
When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee wa
s sent to a convent to be looked after as a "fallen woman." Then the nuns took h
er baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption
. Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him.
Meanwhile, on the other si
de of the Atlantic, Philomena's son was trying to find her. Renamed Michael Hess
, he had become a leading lawyer in the first Bush administration, and he strugg
led to hide secrets that would jeopardize his career in the Republican Party and
endanger his quest to find his mother.
A gripping expose told with novelistic
intrigue, "Philomena" pulls back the curtain on the role of the Catholic Church
in forced adoptions and on the love between a mother and son who endured a life
long separation.
