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Sandra Newman was adopted at birth by an American-Jewish couple, Sheldon and Louise.

Sandra lived in Massachusetts in a seemingly perfect family home, with Sheldon and Louise, and her adoptive brother Seth.

But Louise suffered from serious depression and committed suicide when Sandra was thirteen. She became estranged from her adoptive father because of his addiction to pornography.

Sandra moved to London when she was seventeen. Crippled by shyness and struggling to support herself financially, she turned to prostitution.

When she was twenty five she was traced by her biological father, who had hired a private detective to find her. It turned out that he was a millionaire living in Hollywood, and that her birth mother worked for NASA.

Sandra told Aasmah Mir that she was not angry with her parents for giving her away for adoption. She says that her reunion with them has been a positive experience. Her lifelong passion for writing has finally been fulfilled and she is now an acclaimed novelist.

Sandra's autobiography 'Changeling, a Memoir of Parents Lost and Found' is out now, published by Chatto and Windus.