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Before We Were Yours

Lisa Wingate

Start date: January 1, 2019

Finish date: January 28, 2019

Discussion: Monthly Group Reads

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January: Free-For-All
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What Members Thought

Nov 18, 2017 JanB rated it it was ok

The background: This book is based on the real life events that happened at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, an adoption agency is Memphis, TN, operated by Georgia Tann. The agency was a front for a black market adoption scheme in the 1920s. Ms. Tann would take babies and children from poor families and sell them to the wealthy. Many of the children’s names were changed and records destroyed so the children could not later be traced or found. Many prominent people adopted children from the ...more

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Apr 09, 2018 Candace rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This novel is written in two timelines -- the past and the present. We follow the lives of two strong characters -- Rill Foss (a.k.a. May Crandall) and Avery Stafford. These characters are fictional but are based on true people.

Rill Foss and her brother and sisters are taken from their river boat shanty and placed as wards of the Tennessee Children's Home Society (TCHS) under Miss Georgia Tann, the director. Rill was left with the care of her sibling. One of her sister's, Camillia, has disappea This novel is written in two timelines -- the past and the present. We follow the lives of two strong characters -- Rill Foss (a.k.a. May Crandall) and Avery Stafford. These characters are fictional but are based on true people.

Rill Foss and her brother and sisters are taken from their river boat shanty and placed as wards of the Tennessee Children's Home Society (TCHS) under Miss Georgia Tann, the director. Rill was left with the care of her sibling. One of her sister's, Camillia, has disappeared and the rest, including her brother, are being adopted by affluent families. Unable to stop Miss Tann from adopting out her siblings, Rill sees no other alternative but to try to escape.

Avery Stafford has returned home to help her father, Senator Wells Stafford, through a medical complication. She is also being groomed for his senate seat. It is during a visit to a nursing home for a political photo opportunity that Avery runs into a patient with a mysterious connection to her grandmother. This opens the door to hidden secrets and connections of the past.

The fictional story of Rill and Avery are emotionally moving. I liked the past story -- though heart-wrenching and shocking -- the best. Avery's mystery of digging up the secrets of her Grandma Judy keep the pages turning as well. The horribleness of what Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children's Home Society did to poor families, single mothers and the children they snatched off of porches and streets causes me to cry for justice. This is a story which must be experienced. I highly recommend this novel.

Below are some quotes which stood out to me.

"What the mind don't remember, the heart still know." --Hootsie

"Secrets ain't a healthy thang. Secrets ain't a healthy thang no matter how old they is. Sometime the oldest secrets is the worst of all." --Hootsie

"Life is not unlike a cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn't suit the moment." --May Crandall

"A woman's past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses." --May Crandall

"But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse." --May Crandall ...more

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Jan 01, 2019 Wendy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5000-2019, jan-19

Inspired by actual events at the Tennessee Children's Home Society, directed by Georgia Tann. This adoption organization was absolutely gruesome in their treatment and exploitation of children.
Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate, is told in two timelines. I enjoyed both but I especially loved the story told by Rill as a young girl. I loved her voice and her descriptions.
The author's writing flows beautifully and she weaves her story brilliantly. The pacing was perfect and allowed me to underst ...more

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Oct 10, 2017 Shomeret rated it really liked it

Shelves: my-reviews, contemporary-fiction, historical-fiction

The first book I read by this author was The Language of Sycamores. So I already knew that Lisa Wingate could write powerfully about children in need of supportive adults in their lives when I entered the publisher's giveway of Before We Were Yours on the Goodreads group Historical Fictionistas. That's why I knew that I needed to read and review it.

Before We Were Yours is a book about children removed from their families for profit in the late 1930's. In the case of the Foss family children who ...more

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Jan 12, 2019 Lisa rated it really liked it

I had one cousin who had been adopted and it was something that we always knew. In those days, the prevailing philosophy was to tell children that they'd been adopted from the time they were babies. So I knew he had been flown to New York from an adoption agency in Tennessee. It wasn't until decades later that my family read about the scandals and horrors that had taken place at the Tennessee Children's Home. When I heard about the book through GR, I was interested in reading it.

I have to say th ...more

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