What happens when there are questions that only your father can answer, and you have no idea who he is? That's Tom's predicament in The Other Side of the World, a novel by Jenni Francis, whose family emigrated to Aotearoa in the late 1950s. Jenni has woven fact and coincidences from her own life into the book about Tom and his very protective and secretive mother, Coral. Jenni Francis has several Young Adults books to her name, but she tells Lynn Freeman this is her first venture into writing adult fiction.