Petrina Banfield is a writer, mother and bookworm. She has always wanted to write, but kept her dream under wraps while working at Surrey Police during the day, and ghosting books for other people at night.

Petrina’s other passion, for fostering and adoption, was sparked in her teenage years, after discovering that her father was taken into care as a young baby and then separated from his identical twin at the age of five. Petrina registered as a foster carer in 2007 and became an adoptive parent a few years later. While she was piecing together the scattered fragments of her father’s childhood, her two passions collided.

Captivated by the heart stopping drama of the true-life stories documented within the hospital almoners’ reports held at the London Metropolitan Archive, Petrina was driven to find out more about these early social workers' remarkable work.

The result is Letters From Alice, a gripping and deeply moving tale which brings the colourful world of the 1920s to life.