After a 30-year absence Agnes is returning to Australia, the country of her birth, at the behest of her aging, narcissistic mother.
Having undergone a long period of psychotherapy she now entertains a hope that burning questions will be answered, haunting mysteries solved, and buried memories encouraged into the light.
Something has blighted her life since childhood. Something has cast a long shadow over her existence, affecting her ability to grasp at life fully, to develop sustained relationships and to appreciate her own sense of self-worth.
In a leafy suburb of Sydney, a chance meeting in front of her early childhood home resurrects memories of a traumatic event. This represents the moment young Agnes starts to realise, and repress, feelings of confusion, cruelty and alienation from those who should love her the most.
Agnes – A childhood betrayed and reclaimed is the revelatory, true account of one woman’s determination to grapple with - and heal - the ills that have beset her past.
As the missing pieces of the family puzzle gradually fall into place this brave woman’s search for the truth is vindicated. Decades of mental health challenges, from amnesia to acquired dyslexia to self-limiting thoughts are ultimately overcome, and an irrepressible spirit released.
Repressed Memories, Biography/Memoir, Childhood Trauma, Reinvention, Post War Sydney
About The Author
Judy King grew up in Sydney Australia. After a troubled beginning, she emerged in the nineteen sixties to establish a successful Real Estate and property development business in Paddington.
Selling up to travel the world, she settled with her husband for a year in London, where she divided her time between working in an antique shop in King's Road selling antique scientific instruments and attending an art school in Lambeth. On the strength of her art work in London, she was accepted back in Sydney into a two year ceramics course at the Sydney College of the Arts.
Judy and her husband divorced after the birth of their son in 1976. More recently she has divided her time between making art and renovating old houses in Mallorca.
She currently lives in Soller in an old stone house she renovated with an orchard behind. A walker all her life, her greatest joy is to follow the donkey paths up into the mountains that surround the valley she lives in below.
