Researching the Story — Rasharasha: To Africa for a Rose

This book is a work of non-fiction based primarily on the memoirs of Patricia Wright, née Anderson. Patricia wrote the memoirs over several years during the 1980s. She was aware that they did not form a complete record; she hoped her daughter, Jeannine, would turn them into a book, commenting, ‘My little bit will help. You have all the rest in the letters.’ However, for Patricia herself, writing about her past stimulated a life-long quest to continue learning about it. This book is the result of weaving into the original memoirs material from the letters and Patricia’s knowledge gleaned in the 1990s and thereafter, when the internet provided more information. Only occasionally have I, as the author – or perhaps I should say, ‘editor’, – added recently-available, relevant (and referenced) information that Patricia would not have known.

All quotations are verbatim from the original documents in the family archive. The ‘conversations’ and family mannerisms are reconstructed from clues in the family letters and from the recollections of Jeannine or ‘Janny’, the only surviving member of the direct family. Within their ‘conversations’, all quotations from letters are verbatim from the original.

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