What a wonderful story. The storyline tore at my heart. As we travel through all the twists and turns to get to the truth. The journey keeps you on the edge of your seat A great page turner!

What a beautiful and heartwrenching book. Wanting to uncover the secret makes this book really hard to put down. It is hard to believe that places like this used to exist. The author has an extraordinary ability to effortlessly seam the multiple stories together, going back and forth in time.

Thank you Netgalley for my copy of this wonderful book in return for an unbiased review.

LIsa Wingate is an amazing author and storyteller....Loved every single page of this novel (including the cover art)...Cannot wait to read her next masterpiece.

Based on actual events, unfortunately. Rill and her siblings are living pretty unique childhoods in various stops along the Mississippi River. When their pregnant mother gets sick and their dad is forced to take her to a Memphis hospital, their lives are forever changed. They are taken, as part of an operation where Georgia Tann uses an adoption organization to steal children and sell them to families in need. Rill tries to keep her family together, while figuring out what happened to their parents, and what will ultimately happen to all of them. This one blew my mind!

I wasn't sure what to think of this story when I first started, but I quickly became engrossed! At times it was very hard to read, and it broke my heart. But then I found myself smiling again. Definitely recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley for n advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for a review. This is my review:

It took a while to really get into this book. When it began, I thought it was just some generic romance novel and almost put it down. The transitions from present day to the 1930s was confusing and I had a little trouble figuring out what was going on. I realize the current story had a purpose, but all the "when will they get married" "will she take her Daddy's Senate seat" was distracting, but it did give a little insight into just what the Staffords stand to lose.

In Memphis in 1939, two baby girls are born - one to an impoverished river family and another to a socially prominent family. When one is born dead, the doctor has a recommendation.........

It is a story that has been told many times, but this one is true, or at least based on true stories. It is sad beyond belief, and it was a good read.

Amazing characters and story line. Love the book. Will reread it.

A journey you'll never forget, Before We Were Yours is a literary work of art which will stand the test of time simply because of how poignant and heartbreaking it is. This is a story that will remind us as a society to not repeat our mistakes because it's the children and future generations who suffer the most.

The writing style was beautiful and well captured the characters' different voices while retaining that of its author. The struggle for identity, freedom, a place in society, and for the truth to be known despite how awful it was gripped me by the heartstrings and never once let up. I can see why this book has such long hold lists at various libraries across the United States. Hang in there, folks, because it's so worth the wait. You might want to have tissues at the ready too.

I'm not into politics at all, but Ms. Wingate penned the political side of this story in such a way that even I found it intriguing and easy to understand. That was one of the most impressive things to me about this book and its author, because it's not an easy feat to make me interested in the political thread of a book, movie, or reality. Well done, Ms. Wingate!

The atrocities committed against children in this story are heart-rending, and even more so because they are mere reflections of so many thousands of children's realities. My heart aches for what those poor souls went through, and my only comforts are that God saw their pain, sorrow, and tears, and that He is the One who doles out justice to those who commit crimes against children. May He be glorified through even this.

This is a must-read book for anyone wanting to know the real truth about adoptions in the 1920s through 1950s. It's not an easy read. It will break your heart. But believe me: It's completely worth it.

Content:
* alcohol
* child abuse (including sexual, though this is inferred and not explicitly shown)
* nudity
* two loose uses of God's name (it was unclear if they were in prayer or profane)

This is definitely one of the most compelling, poignant, and heart-rending stories I’ve ever read. Based on true events, Lisa Wingate paints a story that will stay with the reader for a long time. Her perfect pitch author voice captures the essence of Tennessee in 1939 and South Carolina in the present day. Masterfully weaving the story into a dual timeline, she seamlessly brings both tales into one amazing conclusion.
This book kept me enthralled from the first page to the end. Lisa Wingate is on my list of favorite authors, and you can see why if you read this book. She’s a very talented lady.
I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was really engrossed in this book and found myself staying up late to get to the ending and figure out how these people all fit together. Of course, it isn't much of a mystery to figure out how May Crandall fits in with Avery Stafford's family, but I was dying to know the details.

This book was emotional and made me cry multiple times. I'm a crier by nature, but still, proceed with caution. The author did a wonderful job capturing how the children in this sham orphanage must have felt, but I did feel like she glossed over things. I would have liked to know more about the rest of these children's lives, and how they fit into their new families, grew over time, and then eventually found their roots.

This book is fiction but based on true events. While I certainly connected with the fictional characters depicted here, I do think that some of the story was a little too convenient for such a messy situation. The Avery/Elliot/Trent love triangle was maybe a little unnecessary and too easily resolved.

I do stand by my 4-star rating because the story was wonderful overall, but I do think the situation could have been better served by not glossing over details.

It often boggles the mind to realize all of the greed and corruption present in everyday life that affects the lives of innocents who find themselves caught up in the machinations of diabolical minds who would stoop to any level, including kidnapping young children in order to fulfill their avarice. Lisa Wingate’s BEFORE WE WERE YOURS is historical fiction based on the real-life Tennessee Children’s Home Scandal that continued from the late 1930’s to 1950 in which Georgia Tann, the director of the Memphis based operation kidnapped and sold poor children, preferable blond, to the rich and famous all over the country (including the likes of Mommy Dearest Joan Crawford and Dick Powell & June Allyson).

Wingate presents correlating tales set in both the 1930’s and present day that examines Georgia Tann’s dirty laundry and the resulting fallout of her deeds. Representing the various stories of children caught up in the actual case, Wingate has created the Foss family, five children taken from their home on the river and placed in “the system” that was supposedly going to save them but instead committed them to a series of abuses and separation from parents who, although poor, loved and cared for them. Rill Foss the eldest Foss child (12 years old)and designated protector of her younger siblings is a compelling heroine who can tap into seemingly bottomless reserves of strength when push comes to shove but, as a child herself, feels overwhelming guilt when she fails .

In the present Avery Stafford, lawyer daughter of wealth and progeny of a politically connected South Carolina family returns home to assist her ailing Senator father in his run for re-election finds herself embroiled in a baffling mystery when she meets Mae Crandall while touring a local nursing home during a leg of the campaign stomp. Mae seems to recognize her and the bracelet Avery is wearing. Avery too notices something in Mae’s room, an old group photo whose female images strongly resemble both she and her elderly grandmother Judy.

Wingate paints a vivid picture of the sordid cycle of poverty and reminds us of the evil of men and women all too willing to exploit the innocent and desperate with a story that is both gut-wrenching and compulsively readable. Note that certain assumptions must be made by the reader concerning the fate of certain members of the Foss family since they are inferred rather than spelled out.

PLEASE NOTE: Not all is gloom and doom and for those who enjoy a bit of romance in their reads, Wingate has provided that as well.

This book provides fascinating insight into a horrible time in American history. Wingate brings it to light with care and adds a human element to the tale. I am so glad I read it though it was quite sad. I received this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

Before We Were Yours jumps back and forth between 2 timelines – Rill Foss in 1939 and Avery Stafford in the present day. When her parents have to go to the hospital when her mom has birthing complications, they ask twelve-year-old Rill Foss to take care of her younger sisters and brother in their absence. The next morning, however, Memphis police come to their boat and take the 5 of them away to be put in an orphanage. Federal prosecutor Avery Stafford has come to South Carolina to help her senator father after he is diagnosed with cancer. A chance encounter at a nursing home leaves Avery questioning her family's history.

It is horrifying to think that while the Foss children were fictional, there were hundreds or maybe even thousands of real children under the control of Georgia Tann ripped from their families, living in horrible conditions, and even dying. It felt like the author tried to balance the horrors of Rill's story with affluence and the seemingly “perfect” life in Avery's story. I had hoped for the first half of the book that Avery's story wouldn't turn into the cliché where the modern woman in the dual timeline meets her true love while researching whatever mystery from the past. I was a little disappointed when that turned out to be the case, but it was my only complaint with the book. Overall, it was a well-written and engaging book.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an eARC of this book.
An astounding work of fiction based on true events, this book touched my heart in a very profound way. It is beautifully written and moves seamlessly between 1939 and present day. Parts of the book feel as though they couldn't have really happened and then one is told the facts upon which the book is based and realize that they really do not stretch reality. The characters are beautifully developed and it is easy to become totally involved in their stories.

This book tugs at the heart because it's based on an actual tragedy that was ongoing in the Memphis area for 30 years. Poor children were stolen from their families and "sold" to wealthy, well-connected families is the name of "adoption." Wingate is a former journalist and it shows in her attention to historical facts. But it is her skill as a storyteller that makes" Before We Were Yours" a compelling read. This is a story about the power of family connections, love and commitment that will keep you turning the pages. Just keep a box of tissues nearby.

BEFORE WE WERE YOURS by Lisa Wingate (Ballantine Books, June 2017)

What makes this book particularly stunning and memorable is that it’s based on truth. Wingate’s research into the horrific history of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, which essentially stole children from their impoverished parents and sold them to wealthy families, is important. The story of this organization needs to be told, and Wingate tells it skillfully, through the perspective of two fictional characters whose lives intertwine: the young girl Rill, growing up in Memphis in 1939, and the young woman Avery, living in present-day South Carolina. Avery’s story is the less interesting of the two — it’s predictable in places and not overly compelling. But Rill is a wonderful heroine — strong and smart, with an unbeatable spirit. She pops up right out of the book and straight into your heart.

Even though the story is fiction based on fact, it is a heart wrenching read. I enjoy historical stories and know that children really were taken and treated horribly. This story will stay with you. I love the cover!

From 1924 through 1950, Beulah George “Georgia” Tann ran the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, from a stately home on Poplar Avenue in Memphis, TN.

Tann used it as a front for an illegal foundling home and adoption agency that placed over 5,000 newborn infants and children, from toddlers up to age 16, to sell to what Ms. Tann called “high type” families in 48 states.
She used manipulation, deception, pressure tactics, threats, and brute force to take children from mainly poor single mothers in a five-state area to sell to unsuspecting wealthy parents.

This true event at the Tennessee Children’s Home lies at the heart of Wingate’s newest novel. It begs the question – Do you really know your family history? Do you know what secrets are buried, that if exposed, could change your whole perspective on who you are and where you came from? What would you do if you suddenly found out something that could turn your life upside down? Could you live a life chosen for you rather than the life you were born to live?

The story unfolds in two voices – Avery Stafford, young, beautiful, and living the high-life in present day South Carolina and Rill Foss and her four siblings afloat their father’s scrap lumber shanty-boat in 1939 Memphis, Tennessee. As these two stories unfold, secrets and mysteries of the past are revealed that will forever change both of their lives.

Present day. . . Aiken, South Carolina
Wells Stafford, like his father before him, is known for his long and distinguished political service in the Senate. Senator Stafford is currently struggling after a cancer diagnosis threatens not only his life, but the traditions and lifestyle of his family. Is it time to groom his beautiful “brainiac” daughter to be his replacement?
While touring a local nursing home facility on her father’s behalf, Avery spots a photograph of four women; one of the ladies bears a striking resemblance to her Grandmother Judy. Why would this patient, May Crandall, have a picture of her grandmother? Avery’s inquisitive nature sends her on a mission to discover how this patient and her grandmother know each other.

As Avery Stafford is stalked by a staff of social secretaries and races through a power packed daily schedule day after day, she finds herself nagged by the picture of her grandmother frolicking with three strange women on a beach.

She begins to sneak time between photo shoots and ribbon cuttings to search for clues that eventually lead her to her family home on Edisto Island. What she finds there changes everything she thought she knew about herself and her future.

Memphis, Tennessee backwater, 1939
Briny and Queenie Foss, along with their five children, live the shantyboat life floating from river to river scrounging and hustling as needed to survive. Our shanty boat narrator, Queenie’s twelve-year old daughter, begins her story with her mother near death laboring to deliver twins aboard the boat. It soon becomes obvious that Queenie will die if she isn’t taken to a hospital for care and Briny makes the decision to take Queenie to town. He is forced to leave the younger children alone in the dead of night with his eldest daughter in charge. As the children hunker down terrified, fearful of bandits and mischief makers, the police arrive and take the children off the boat telling them they are taking them to see their parents. The confused and traumatized children are taken to the Tennessee Children’s Home where they are given new names and subjected to unimaginable horrors intended to break the children’s bond to the past.

While Avery searches for answers, May Crandall reminisces about life in 1939 and beyond.

She muses on her childhood life on the shanty boat with her free-spirit parents viewing it all through rose-colored glasses; right up until the happy times for the Foss family ended abruptly. Her fictional memories of the dark world at the Home will traumatize the reader with the truth that actually happened to real life children. Children forced to live in squalor and horror in the shadows and paraded in public as perfect models of angelic behavior for adoption to the highest bidder.

With each secret uncovered, Avery and May’s stories blend toward an inevitable revelation.

Blogger Thoughts . . .
The ending was obvious to me right from the beginning. There’s usually some misdirection to keep the reader engaged and in this case, I found myself staring at the incredible treatment of children as incentive enough to keep reading.
The segments on the Children’s Home were hard to read. I was hospitalized as a child and saw my first example of child cruelty in the bed next to mine. I’ll spare you the details but it was horrible.
It was difficult to rate the book. In the end, I found myself thinking a lot about the underlying theme that children’s futures are predetermined by the circumstance of birth. Can a child with memories of one life ever resolve what might have been had something dramatic not intervened and changed the course of their life? Can the past stay in the past? How will a future be affected by the past? Will secrets protect or harm future generations?

Wonderful book to read. I finished it in one day!!!

5 Stars + Master storyteller, Lisa Wingate returns following her heartwarming Carolina Series The Sea Keeper's Daughters with her best yet, BEFORE WE WERE YOURS Top Books of 2017— A powerful story within a story inspired by one of American’s most horrific real-life adoption scandals. (stunning front cover)!

A haunting, beautifully written and emotional story of family, sisters, human connections and the strong bonds of love. From good versus evil, deeply-buried secrets, and injustice, to triumph in the face of adversity.

With two storylines, two families generations apart— the bridge between past and present. Before We Were Yours alternates between the historical story of the Foss Children and the modern-day story of Avery Stafford.

Present day: We meet Avery Stafford. 30 years-old, graduated top of her class from Columbia Law and works for US attorney’s office. A successful career as a federal prosecutor, a fiance’ and an upcoming wedding.

She returns home to South Carolina to help her father, a high-profile politician. He is up for re-election and has some health problems (cancer) and undergoing chemo. Of course, he wants Avery to step into his shoes with a political career.

Avery’s grandmother, Judy is a ghost of her former self. They are keeping it from the media due to the fact they have moved her to an upscale luxury facility. They are currently dealing with a scandal of wrongful death and abuse cases involving eldercare, so they do not want people pointing fingers. Of course, the decision to move to her this facility was not political—her doctor recommended.

They are heartsick about her cruel descent into dementia. Before they moved her to the nursing home, she escaped her caretaker and staff and was found wandering at a business complex near a mall where she formerly shopped. Ironically, since she cannot even remember their names.

While touring on the nursing homes (not as luxurious as Judy's), Avery encounters a woman. She calls Avery, Fern. The nurse called the woman, May Crandall.

Through the mind and voice of May, she has triggers from the past. She thinks of Queenie her mother and Camellia. Thinking back to the Mississippi riverbank to Memphis. The night there was no returning.

Past: Memphis 1939. A twelve-year-old girl Rill. She lives on a riverboat and helps take care of her four young siblings. Life is difficult. However, there are complications during the birth at the hospital and the children are snatched, while Rill was in charge.

They are thrown into an orphanage. They are told they will be returned to their parents. Rill must keep her siblings together. However, they find evil and something more sinister than they could ever imagine.

“I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not one that goes on forever and cuts all the way to the bone.”

From past to present, Avery is haunted by this woman in the nursing home. Is there a connection? She had on her grandmother’s bracelet. Her curiosity has been piqued by her sad story. Does this woman May, know her grandmother Judy?

There is no way Avery can let this drop. Secrets from the past. She goes back to her grandmother’s letters and notes.

Who is Trent Turner in Edisto? He does not seem helpful. What is he hiding?

Amidst the suspense and intensity while Avery tries desperately to piece together the mystery of her family’s past, we hear the heartbreaking story of sisters and children taken against their will. Ripped from their biological parents.

A true to life story of Georgia Tann, the director of a Memphis-based adoption organization which basically kidnapped and sold children to wealthy families for many years. Thousands of birth families would never know what became of their children.

“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.”

If you have read any of Lisa Wingate’s stories, you know she writes of family, love, and deep connections. A master storyteller, her books are thought-provoking, inspiring, emotional, and deeply moving. Her passion shines through as she shares her stories from the heart to her readers.

Normally when reading a dual time timeline story, I find the historical one the most intriguing. However, in this case, both stories are equally as compelling, since the present-day story still revolves around its own past family history.

As in sex and child trafficking today, the abuse and devastation continue to destroy lives and futures of innocent children. The monsters target the poor, single mothers, or those on welfare. In this haunting yet true story of babies and children being kidnapped and abused, molested, and mistreated while waiting for the big payday. Some were stolen at birth and siblings and parent’s lives forever to be ripped apart.

Well-researched, the author offers details as to the number of children who vanished under Georgia Tann’s management range as high as five hundred. Thousands more disappeared into adoptions for profit in which names, birth dates, and birth records were altered to prevent biological families from finding their children. This went on from the 1920s-1950s and was not fully brought to justice until 1996.

From the author: “If there is one overarching lesson to be learned from the Foss children and from the true-life story of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, it is that babies and children, no matter what corner of the world they hail from, are not commodities, or objects, or blank slates, as Georgia Tann so often represented her wards; they are human beings with histories and needs, and hopes, and dreams of their own.”

Lisa Wingate is at the top of her game. Having read all 8 total works in the Carolina Heirlooms’ series, have been an avid fan of the author’s writing.

However, BEFORE WE WERE YOURS, really showcases her strength to blend both historical with modern-day stories in a powerful way to capture the heart and most intimate feelings of her characters and the dual timelines. Resilience and the power of love.

“The heart never forgets where we belong.”

I had the opportunity of reading this book well before its publication date in June; however, I was dealing with my dad’s illness in North Carolina, his death, funeral, and executor of his estate. Playing catch up with reviews/postings I missed this summer. A special thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an advanced reading copy.

I enjoyed this book so much, purchased the audiobook for my personal library and listened again this past week. Emily Rankin and Catherine Taber are ideal narrators and in sync with Lisa Wingate’s poignant story.

“Do we carry the guilt from the sins of past generations? If so, can we bear the weight of that burden? Trent” ― Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

Highly recommend! If you can only read one book this year, this would be the one. Wingate fully understands the power of story. If this does not win Historic Fiction of the Year, I will be shocked. Ideal for book clubs and further discussions.

If you have not viewed the The Book Club Kit, by Random House— highly recommend, to enhance your reading experience. Well done!

For fans of Charles Martin, Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, Sally Hepworth, Nicholas Sparks and Diane Chamberlain.

As the author mentions in an interview, “In the end, both the modern-day and historical characters in Before We Were Yours are willing to risk everything else for one all-important thing—a place to be authentic and people to be authentic with. That’s what I love most about the book.”

Your fans agree. Cannot wait to see what’s next from this talented author. No wonder it still ranks today as #7 Most Read book on Amazon. Totally captivating!

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