Book Review: Before We Were Yours

By Annell Gerson

Fans of Orphan Train, Invention of Wings, One Thousand White Women, and other historical fiction novels that reveal little known events in the archives of American history, need look no further for their next MUST read. Lisa Wingates new novel, Before We Were Yours, is an unforgettable fictionalized story based on the true account of the Tennessee Childrens Home Society (TCHS) and Georgia Tann, a woman who, between 1920 and 1948, kidnapped and sold, under the guise of adoption, over 5,000 children. Because of neglectful, abusive conditions, she most likely also caused the deaths of over 500.

Before We Were Yours is told through the eyes of Rill Foss, a young child in 1939, and Avery Stafford, a present-day young attorney from a powerful South Carolina family. In 1939, Rill and her four younger siblings are living on their parents shanty boat on the Mississippi River in Memphis, Tennessee. Due to complications during childbirth, the children are left on the boat under the watch of a friend while their parents seek medical help in town. The Foss children, most with beautiful blonde hair, are prime candidates for Tanns black-market enterprise.

When Avery, whos on the fast track to take over her fathers senate seat, meets May Crandall at a nursing home in Aiken, SC, a picture in Mays room reminds Avery of her grandmother. Curiosity leads her to investigate Mays life, and thus begins a journey through a long-hidden family history. Readers follow the longstanding prestige and reputation of the Stafford family alongside the defenseless Foss siblings.

Tann did place some children living in deplorable, dangerous and abusive conditions into loving and financially secure homes, but mostly, with the help of corrupt officials, she seized children, some literally off the front porch of their homes, leaving parents grief-stricken, without due process, or the financial means to fight to get their children back.

Though Before We Were Yours reveals a notorious scandal in American History, it is also a novel of hope, the power of family, and the healing derived from truth.