Who Knows Tomorrow
A Memoir of Finding Family among the Lost Children of Africa
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Born in Spain and raised by a struggling single mother, Lisa Lovatt-Smith became an editor at British Vogue at nineteen, the youngest in Condé Nast history. She helped launch Spanish Vogue and partied across Europe with celebrities, fashion designers, photographers, and supermodels.
By her thirties, Lisa has her dream career and a glamorous life in Paris, but when her adopted daughter Sabrina is expelled from school, Lisa takes her to volunteer in a Ghanaian orphanage in the hopes of getting her back on track. What she discovers there changes both their lives for good.
Appalled by the deplorable conditions she finds, Lisa moves to Ghana permanently and founds OAfrica, dedicating her personal resources to reuniting hundreds of Ghanaian children with their families and spearheading a drive to shut down corrupt orphanages. On this unforgettable journey, Lisa confronts death threats, malaria, arson, and heartbreaking poverty; she also discovers truly inspiring children trapped in limbo by a moneymaking scheme bigger than she ever imagined.
Who Knows Tomorrow is the engaging, frank, and often surprisingly funny story of one amazing woman who has traveled the globe in search of meaningful connection. Although to Lisa her story will always be about the children, it's also a touching celebration of a woman who is talented, generous, and unfailingly courageous.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the midst of a career in high fashion, journalist and author (Paris Interiors) Lovatt-Smith stepped off her gilded career path to pursue a passion. This inspiring memoir explores her transformation from the youngest editor at British Vogue into an activist focused on the establishment of children s aid organizations in Ghana. When her daughter s emotional problems became overwhelming, a counselor suggested that volunteering might help. Hoping the experience of working with orphans would be a life lesson for her 17-year-old daughter, whom she had adopted 12 years earlier, Lovatt-Smith moved their household to Ghana. Conditions were abominable, but working with the children changed the course of both their lives, intellectually and geographically. As Lovatt-Smith writes, I had moved to Ghana, effectively transformed my career from writing and styling for magazines to charity work, and opened three companies Oafrica in Ghana, Spain and France Though she was industrious and committed to her work, the author s na vet regarding her adopted country s customs and culture soon became apparent as she grasped the depth of corruption within Ghana s adoption business. The author reversed her plan in 2005, and initiated a crusade to get children out of orphanages and into families. It was not only what I was reading of course, it was the nearly four years of experience in seven different orphanages, all with the same problems, she writes. Lovatt-Smith s immensely readable narrative explores her personal metamorphosis and her positive impact on the children of Ghana.
