The daughter of an American serviceman and an Irish GI bride, Heather Marshall was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1952. Her mother had not wanted to stay in South Carolina with her husband and returned to Belfast pregnant with her daughter. So her daughter grew up not knowing her father through her youth and into her teens through the troubles the province later knew. Heather and her husband met in 1975 and married the next year. Their son was born in 1980. Their joy was sadly overshadowed a few days after he was born when Heather had a severe post-partum manic depressive episode, which resulted in the authorities taking their son into care. The following year was fraught with difficulties for the new parents. They were constantly trying to fight for the custody of their son. There were court appearances, constant monitoring by social workers, and after a year had passed, they were told that their son would remain in foster care until he was eighteen. Determined that this would not be the end, they devised a way that they would, after all, be a family, with God's help. Their answer would lie across the Atlantic, in South Carolina.