Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm. As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story and get to know who her father really was.

Tom Carew was a left-handed stutterer, a maverick and a law unto himself. As a member of the Jedburghs, an elite SOE unit, he was parachuted behind enemy lines to raise resistance in France, then Burma, in the Second World War. But his wartime exploits are only the start of it, and Keggie soon finds herself in a far more astonishing and consuming place than she had bargained for.

Dadland is a manhunt. Keggie takes us on a spellbinding journey, in peace and war, into surprising and shady corners of history, her rackety English childhood, the poignant breakdown of her family, the corridors of dementia and beyond. Part detective story, part memoir, part history book, it is a celebration of the Technicolor life of an impossible, irresistible, unstoppable man.