Before We Were Yours

Rill’s family has lived on the Mississippi River for years, calling a shantyboat home.  They’ve made friends in their nomadic life and always made the best with the very little they possess.  But that all unravels when her mother is lost during a difficult labor and their father, in the middle of his grief, signs away custody of the remaining children to the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage.  For Rill and her siblings, this is just the beginning of their pain as the children are treated poorly in the orphanage, separately placed for adoption, and lost to each other for decades.

Lisa Wingate’s writing has often been inspired by the tales her family has told for generations.  Before We Were Yours has a little different inspiration – the true story of Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.  Renown for her generosity and kindness in sheltering orphaned and placing them with loving families, Tann’s network cashed in on the lucrative child trafficking by taking children from their loving families or lying to parents to facilitate their removal and adoption by some very high-profile clients including politicians and movie stars.  The dark origins of these picture-perfect families may seem like tall tales, but Wingate based the characters of Rill and her siblings on survivor’s tales of their own treatment, and those who did not survive.  This is a story about the pain and trauma experienced by the birth families, but also of the hope and love of the adoptive families.

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I give Before We Were Yours 5 out of 5 stars.  As an adopted child given up at birth, I have been fascinated with the tales of what the process looked like in the early 1900’s.  Wingate explores that world with honesty and depth in a way that pulls readers in.   With dualling timelines showing both their early childhood and their later life together, the author explores adoption from the children’s point of view – something I haven’t read of much.  I did find it hard to connect with the older versions of the children, but that could have been because of the mental illness written into their characters and the way that our protagonist also saw difficulty connecting with them.  I appreciate the way Wingate wrote that mental illness and life in an assisted living facility into the story with such respect and insight.

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If you enjoyed The Butterfly Collector about the baby trafficking industry in Australia in the same time period, you will love this book.  I would also recommend this to anyone who has relatives adopted during this timeframe or who have been adopted themselves.  Given scenes of child abuse and sexual assault, I would direct this book to more mature audiences over 16.

I chose Before We Were Yours for the Read With Lindsey Reading Challenge prompt “about siblings”.  This book had been on my radar for quite a while given its theme of adoption.  A Goodreads Choice winner for Historical Fiction in 2017, this book spoke to all my love of history and southern fiction, too.  I was surprised at how much I didn’t know about the world of adoption in this era.

If you, like me, are looking to learn more about Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, visit Lisa Wingate’s page with resources for book clubs here.

 

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What I’m Reading

• Current print book: A Season of Perfect Happiness, Maribeth Fischer
• Current audio book: The Long Game, Elena Armas
• Book I’m most looking forward to: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Fredrik Backman