She’s being groomed to take her father’s seat in the Senate, especially now when her father’s health is getting worse. WOW! Another fabulous book, the south sure can spin a story! I have read quite a few books recently that take place in the south, and all were wonderful and very interesting to this California girl.... and even though the historic part of this book was horrific and tragic, I could still see the hope, the good and the cultural Pride of the southern people.....

I highly recommend this wonderfully written and well researched book! This will definitely stay on my mind for a long time. There are two storylines going on in this novel, one in 1939 and one is present day. They slowly unravel and come together. I thought the writing was wonderful and so were the characters in both storylines. As gut wrenching as this novel is I feel it is an important story that must be read!Immediately, the children are thrust into a grim situation. They experience abuse and cruelty at the hands of the people running the "orphanage". Tragedy and loss become all that they know as they are stripped of their former identities. Separated, renamed and adopted out, their lives are forever changed. The story is a dual story line: one features a family of children who were taken from their parents, and spent time in the home before being separated and adopted, while the second story line is set in the present day, featuring a young woman, Avery, who is searching for the truth about her grandmother.

Perhaps it's just me, but it bugged me a bit how none of the children even tried to speak up. I understand how horrible it was, but children usually speak their mind. Even when you don't want them to. At least once speak their mind before they realize the trouble they might get in. Then, as adults, they wanted to hide the fact they were sisters. Later, Avery gets a phone call from the nursing home who reveal that May took Avery’s bracelet when she met her and they have it. when Very meets May in the nursing home, she sees a photograph of a woman that resembles her grandmother Judy Stafford, whom May refers to as “Queenie”. She is the author of twenty novels, some of which are part of series, and almost all of which have been shortlisted for some award. Among them: the Utah Library Award, the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize, the LORIES Best Fiction Award, the Oklahoma Book Award, the Carol Award, etc.

but my heart went out deeper for the past story with 12 year old Rill and his brothers and sisters. Christine is the actual woman who delivers a stillborn from the start of the book. Christine and her husband are wealthy and have everything except for the one thing that brings her joy; children. Her husband does everything he can to console her and bring a baby home – even if that baby is illegally taken away from their parents. When the sisters were initially reunited, they decided to keep their history to themselves rather than telling their families. Do you agree or disagree with this decision? What do you think the implications would have been if they had gone public? Do you think family secrets should remain secret, particularly after the people who kept those secrets have passed away? Or do family secrets belong to the next generation, as well? Have you ever discovered a secret in your family history? If so, what was it (if you care to share it, that is)? Jonah shakes his head, and Trent gives me a quizzical look, sandy-blond brows twisting together. He has a very flexible forehead. pg. 163 – I mean, this is unbelievably bad.

Shortly after, a few strange people including a police officer comes to the boat and lie that they’ve come to take Rill and her siblings to meet with their parents, but instead whisked them away to Memphis where they are given new names and put up for sale to those who could afford them. If you have ever watched “ Les Mis,” you’ve already guessed what Tann wants: more money. And if you’ve read carefully up till now, you’ll understand us for having second thoughts on using Georgia Tann birthname. Ms. Wingate did a beautiful job of merging fact and fiction. The writing was flawless and the story was well-crafted. My heart went out to the Foss children, as I lost myself in their story. While this novel is based on historical events and real persons who existed in Tennessee in the first half of the 20th century, preying on poor families and their children, I found that I had great difficulty relating to it, primarily because of the contemporary story and the primary protagonist. My thoughts vary on this book. Some aspects are well done and the expose of the decades-long adoption ring in Memphis is both interesting and abhorrent. But the total presentation still bothers me, particularly the "heroine" of the contemporary story, who might have stepped out of a romance novel. I wonder how this could have been done differently.There she finds a phone number from a certain Trent Turner living on Edisto Island who may know something about her grandmother’s past. And they successfully reach their shanty boat. However, there they meet their childhood friend Silas who tells them that their mother has recently passed away and that their father is an alcoholic. Trent Turner Sr, or Stevie, is one of the children unlawfully taken from his real parents to the Memphis children camp. He is one of the children that Rill Foss takes care of and becomes friends with. They both stay in touch even after the Memphis orphanage and hold the secret of their identity close to their hearts. This novel follows the lives of the five Foss siblings who grow up living on a Mississippi River shantyboat with their parents in 1939. They have a unique and wild childhood with parents who shower them with love and affection in unconventional ways. One of the children, Twelve-year-old Rill Foss, grows up taking care of her younger siblings, often fulfilling parental roles. Rill is one of the narrators of the book and she is a character I will not soon forget - I absolutely adored her! But not one moment of this day will happen by accident. These past two months in South Carolina have been all about making sure the nuances are just right—shaping the inferences so as to hint, but do no more.

Judy Stafford is the grandmother to Avery Stafford and the mother to Wells Stafford – a United States senator. Judy is one of the twin children delivered by Queenie Foss. Following the laborious delivery, Queenie and her husband Briny are lied to by a doctor that their twin babies Judy and Arthur are born dead, but they are in fact stolen and sold to a wealthy family. Avery discovers Judy was researching about the Tennessee Children’s Home Society (TCHS) from the last entry on Judy’s old typewriter She stumbles upon the name Georgia Tann. Trent, on the other hand, retrieves a document belonging to his grandfather which reveals the true nature of the adoption of Shad Arthur Foss. The children Georgia Tann preyed upon were uniformly poor—they belonged to shanty towns or impoverished single mothers. When Tann gets hold of them, they are immediately treated as objects to be molded and sold, highlighting the perception of lower-class people as subhuman. When Trent Turner III learns that his grandfather was also one of the children Tann kidnapped, he wonders how things might have been different “if his [grandfather’s] parents hadn’t been poor.” This emphasizes the fact that it was poor children who were targeted, not middle- or upper-class children. Notably, Tann would habitually tell potential adoptive parents (who were typically wealthy and well-respected) that the children’s biological parents were college graduates, professors, or other members of the educated classes. This means that Tann also recognized the stigma attached to poverty and sought to hide the truth, knowing upper-class Americans would never risk their family’s reputation by adopting children born to poor parents.If I was to complain about anything, it would be the way the characters frequently have whole conversations without specific names, just to keep the reader guessing who is who, even when it doesn't make sense for them to withhold the person's name. This is a minor quibble, though, and I do understand the necessity for it. Alternating between the perspectives of privileged and successful Avery Stafford in the present, and twelve-year-old Rill Floss in depression-era Memphis, a story emerges linking Avery's grandmother to Rill and her four siblings, who were stolen from their riverboat home and their two loving parents. Through the dual narrative and Avery's digging into the past, a tale of unimaginable horrors is uncovered. Now, I look at my dad and think, How can you not want it, Avery? This is what he’s worked for all his life. What generations of Staffords have strived for since the revolutionary war, for heaven’s sake. Our family has always held fast to the guiding rope of public service. Daddy is no exception. Since graduating from West Point and serving as an Army aviator before I was born, he has upheld the family name with dignity and determination. Avery Stafford is considered the protagonist of Lisa Wingate’s ‘ Before We Were Yours.’ Her disposition and perseverance make her the life of the novel – as well as the reason the Foss family secret is solved. Avery is one of the narrators with which Lisa Wingate opts to see and tell the captivating stories in ‘ Before We Were Yours.’