A Life Apart - The Fate Of An Outsider (Paperback)

A Life Apart is the true story of Patrick, born in 1931 in Port Said, Egypt. When his Irish father, a master mariner, was lost at sea in 1934 his mother was forced to take him back to her family home in Mersina, South Eastern Turkey, where the narrative begins. Despite being labelled an outsider for his mixed heritage, Patrick grew up with a strong and enduring affinity for the costal town of Mersina and its people, however attending the local Turkish primary school created in him a troubled ambivalence and he began to become aware of a skeleton in the family closet - At times moving, humorous and ironic, A Life Apart tells of one young man's struggle for acceptance as he refuses to compromise his mixed origins and succumb to the pressure to conform to the rules, even while passing through an archetypical English public school and into life as an engineer in work-a-day England.