Although her books contain war, death, cruelty, abandonment, and other difficult issues, Laird is also acknowledged for underscoring the humanity and universality of the situations she describes, and her books are often viewed as testimonies to the indomitability of the human spirit. In a 1998 autobiographical essay for
Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS), Laird wrote that her "inclination to write was a maternal legacy; the subject matter, on the other hand, rather persistently paternal." She continued, "They say that all works of fiction are essentially autobiographical, and my sons tease me that my three books are all about searching for a lost father, which I suppose, in a way, they are."
Born in London, Laird arrived in the world less than three months after the 1944 death of her father at the Battle of Arnhem, the first attempt by the Allies to free Holland from Nazi occupation. "Perhaps the most poignant aspect of my father's death," Laird said, "is the fact that it was, in a very particular sense, unnecessary." Laird's father was born in Cologne, Germany, to a successful Jewish architect and his gentile wife.
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