The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl

“Memoirs are best told by those who have stood in the path of life, letting it flow through—not around—them, leaving poetic truth to survive the filtering of experience. Rosemary Kingsland has created such a memoir. The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl is a magnificently, sensitively remembered, beautifully written story that excites the senses with such liveliness it stays locked in the reader’s imagination. This work is a literary achievement worth celebrating.” —Terry Kay, author of Taking Lottie Home


“The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl is all at once enthralling, lyrical, and stunning in its illumination of a young girl’s exhilaration and pain. I’m not sure what is more shocking about this gorgeous memoir—Rosemary Kingsland’s adolescent affair with the brilliant and dashing Richard Burton or the bizarre dynamics she had to cope with inside her family. Yet Kingsland handles each episode with nothing short of grace, revealing the humanity of each of its characters.” —Karen Essex, author of Kleopatra and Pharaoh


“Rosemary Kingsland’s story is not just beautifully written, but irresistible. Each person she recalls in this memoir, from the wild and poetic Richard Burton to her own family members, is drawn with such grace and understanding that their heartaches and joys reflect our own. In short, this is a book that simply sparkles.” —Deborah Joy Corey, author of Losing Eddie and The Skating Pond