Title: Before We Were Yours
By: Lisa Wingate
Published: 2017
Call #: FIC Wingate
This novel alternated between 12-year-old Rill Fosse in 1939 Memphis and Avery Stafford in modern day South Carolina. After an odd encounter with a woman at a nursing home, Avery Stafford begins to investigate her grandmother’s history, a matter complicated by the woman’s dementia. The more she digs, the more concerned Avery becomes about controversy that can upset her family’s political lifestyle. Rill, meanwhile, lived happily with her family on a riverboat until one day when the authorities take her and her four siblings away while her parents are at the hospital. Then begins her horrific experience at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage while she desperately tries to keep her siblings together and find a way back to the river.
This tale is even further heartbreaking with the revelation that while Rill is a fictional character, the experiences she endured at the orphanage are based on the accounts of survivors from the Georgia Tann adoption scandal. The novel is a captivating story about perseverance in the face of hardship, the ties of family, and the discovery of what truly defines a person.
Mary-Megan K.
Popular Materials Asst.