“A FAMILY IS GOOD COVER
You do love them, though; the emotions, at least, are real.”
What happens to a spy when she’s ninety years old? THE UNKNOWN MRS ROSEN tells the story of a spy, but
this is no ordinary spy story.
It's
about a family being torn apart by caring for their
mother in her final years - and the contrast between the helpless person she
is becoming and the capable, courageous woman she used to be. For in the end it is not Nazi
Germany or Soviet Russia which defeats Marjorie Rosen, but
neglect in hospital in a quiet English seaside town.
While her middle-aged children struggle to deal with social
services,
Marjorie relives an unspoken life of espionage, betrayal and violence – about which they know nothing.
A brilliant, tough-minded problem solver, the young Marjorie is transferred
from code-breaking, trained for combat and sent alone into wartime Germany to make contact with the wife of
a senior Nazi official. There is an instant rapport between the two
women.
A secret alliance between Marjorie and Erika continues
throughout the Cold War. In a
clandestine web of former wartime connections, Marjorie is drawn deeper into
the world of secret intelligence.
War is the making of Marjorie and her generation. Great
historical events provide the background to an obscure life that is, in
fact, thrilling and heroic.
Marjorie must constantly guard her cover as an ordinary wife
and mother, always purposely unremarkable, raising three post-War children
who cause great grief to her beloved husband Harry, even, she believes, contributing
to his death.
On the eve of retirement, when Erika is finally betrayed and murdered,
Marjorie hunts down the traitor to a corner of rural France seething with
its own legacy of dark memories and wartime secrets.