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When Anne Hanson’s dad first asked her to investigate the secret past of his parents, little did she know what she was getting into. For two decades, despite all her digging, she failed to unearth even the tiniest speck of evidence that the families of her grandparents, Frank and Ida Hanson, had ever existed. If her quest were a detective novel, its title would have been, “The Case of the Missing Ancestors.”
Finally, Anne unearthed her grandparents’ true identities and the secrets they took their graves. Journeying into an early twentieth century drama of pain and heartache, she solved a mystery from an era when a young couple, thwarted by social conventions, could simply vanish and create new lives. They radically altered their family destiny, with aftereffects that reverberated for generations.
Yet Buried Secrets: Looking for Frank and Ida is, ultimately, a love story. When she learned the truth of her grandparents’ past, Anne comprehended the true depth of their love. Buried Secrets also illuminates the love between a dad and the daughter who gave him answers he had longed for his entire life.
Available at Ingram for wholesale purchases.
“Buried Secrets is as suspenseful as a detective novel,” according to the Akron Beacon Journal. You can read the full review by clicking the button below.
My book was literary pick of the week in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press newspaper!
KMPH TV Fresno, Great Day Book Club, Oct 24, 2022
Hanson interweaves her engaging personal account … with fictionalized vignettes from various times in her grandparents’ lives, which give the memoir a novelistic dimension … it’s an intriguing journey through the world of genealogical sleuthing.
—Kirkus Reviews
Anne Hanson’s beautifully written memoir mystery is full of interesting characters, intrigue, and surprises. It’s a page-turner that will captivate readers from beginning to end. A great read!
—Elaine Tyler May, Author of Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
What a pleasure to read a book of discovery that moves forward like a true mystery whodunnit. It was hard to put down, so eager was I to find out what happened.
—David Rowland, President, Old York Road Historical Society
I find Anne Hanson’s Buried Secrets a rich journey through one family’s history. While details differ, however, I think all families share the complexities of past relationships that have come through generations and, without explanation, have given each generation its peculiar character. Buried Secrets brings to life past family members and the process of discovery with clarity.
This book does not easily fit into any neat category. It is concurrently a mystery story, a social history, and an examination of family complexities, for starters. Perhaps the core of this story, the glue that holds it together, is the narrator’s reflection “I have learned that the price of a deep and profound love is an equally deep pain upon its loss.” Its celebration of love even in difficult circumstances is powerful.
—Tom Woodward, Retired English teacher of forty-four years at Westtown Friends School
Book Launch Party
New Britain Public Library program—Feb. 18, 2023
Waterstone at the Circle
Author talk and reading (private event)
The Public Library of Brookline
Author talk and reading
2 PM
361 Washington Street, Hunneman Hall, Brookline, Massachusetts
Book club discussion (private event)
Malden, Massachusetts
Goddard House, Brookline (private event)
2:30 PM
The Public Library of Akron
True Crime Book Club (Virtual)
6:30 PM EDST
Zoom link to come
Old York Road Historical Society
Author talk and reading
7 PM
Abington Friends Meeting
John Barnes Room, 520 Meetinghouse Road, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
Devon Family History Society
Devon, UK
Author talk and reading (Zoom)
7:30 PM GMT (2:30 PM EST)
Event link to come
Anne Hanson, an inveterate explorer of the unknown, has always followed when her curiosity beckoned. She crossed the ocean for her African Studies degree, and as a reporter would drive endless miles across town to get the story. Finally, when investigating her grandparents’ secrets, she journeyed into a bygone century, her vehicle painstaking and detailed research.
Anne has written for the Boston Globe and numerous newspapers, as well as for corporate publications and the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s American Ancestors magazine. Although she loathes first drafts, Anne loves whipping unfinished writing into shape.
When she is not sleuthing or writing, Anne, a lover of food, foreign languages, and local history, can often be found photographing plants and trees during open-air exercise sessions, or creating art with repurposed objects. During the day, she works for a software company. Her favorite authors include English novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, and Barbara Pym.
A Wesleyan University graduate, Anne grew up in suburban Philadelphia, where she attended Quaker schools. She now lives with her husband just outside Boston, Massachusetts.
© Copyright 2022. Anne Hanson Author & New England Books, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
