Obedient Chains

Some secrets are packed in a suitcase. Others are buried in the steam

Rangiora, New Zealand, 2002. Niamh Essie Sanderson has always known her mother, Rachel Mary, as a woman of quiet strength and unshakable grace. But when a frantic search into their Irish heritage leads Niamh to a shuttered convent in County Cork, she finds a record that shouldn't exist.

According to the dusty ledgers of the Magdalene Laundries, a woman named Rachel Mary never left Ireland. She didn't marry a "Kiwi bloke." ...