Everyone I knew was reading and discussing the mixture of fact and fiction that Brown so successfully utilised to propel himself – and the histories upon which he capitalised – into the public eye. Although I was just 14 at the time of the book’s publication, there was an inescapable sense of being surrounded by the novel. I still remember with surprising clarity the popular hysteria that followed the release of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claw.” As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. It is the story of who survived that search and who did not, and why. This is the story of how as a girl of sixteen I went in search of my father and his past, and of how he went in search of his beloved mentor and his mentor’s own history, and of how we all found ourselves on one of the darkest pathways into history. Recently, however, a shock of sorts has prompted me to look back over the most troubling episodes of my life and the lives of the several people I loved best. “The story that follows is one I never intended to commit to paper.
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