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Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.
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This is a well-written novel that kept my interest. Unfortunately it’s probably a book I should have started reading without any foreknowledge about the true story that inspired it. I found myself starting to feel more and more dread as I got closer to the parts that I knew I would find emotionally difficult, so ultimately I gave up on reading it.
0 Before We Were Yours
Although it's very slow in getting started (Hang in there! It's worth it!), this becomes a can't-put-it-down book that tells a heartbreaking tale based on historical facts. From the 1920s to 1950 in Tennessee, wealthy couples were able to adopt babies and children who had been taken from poor families--from trickery to outright kidnapping--in a scheme that essentially put those children up for sale. Even more tragically, while awaiting adoption, the children who were under the auspices of the Tennessee Children's Home Society were housed in horrific conditions, including being routinely fed bug-infested food, beaten and placed in solitary confinement, sexually abused and even murdered.
Written by Lisa Wingate, the book is structured as two stories in one, alternating chapter by chapter. The present day story focuses on Avery Stafford, an attorney and daughter of a U.S. senator from South Carolina, who is trying to uncover the secrets of her family that she traces back to the Tennessee Children's Home Society. The other part of the book takes place in 1939 during the Great Depression and focuses on Rill Foss, a child who lives with her parents and siblings on a shanty boat on the Mississippi River, and is terrifyingly kidnapped with her sisters and brother and sent to live at a notorious Memphis boarding facility that is part of the Tennessee Children's Home Society while awaiting adoption.
This novel is compelling and eventually becomes a real page-turner as it explores what it means to be a family, as well as the power of secrets--even those decades in the past--to unravel and hurt us or empower us and make us stronger. I think this is a must read for everyone who wants to learn something of the past. I do recommend that you take your time and give this a chance.
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