Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate explores the true stories of thousands of children involved in the kidnapping and black market adoptions perpetrated by the Tennessee Children's Home Society under the direction of Georgia Tann. Wingate's book follows fictional siblings Rill, Fern, Lark, Camellia, and Gabion in 1939 as they are taken from their poor but loving family and placed in the Children's Home to await adoption. The book also follows Avery Stafford in the present day who is destined to follow in her father's Senatorial footsteps but has become obsessed with uncovering a mystery surrounding her ailing grandmother. When Avery discovers the matriarch of their important family may have ties to the scandal surrounding the Children's Home, she feels obligated to find the truth.

I half liked this book. I really enjoyed reading the parts where Avery is searching through family secrets and history, but the chapters with Rill and her siblings were just heartbreaking. The circumstances at the Home were dire and horrifying. These children were taken from loving families that were just too poor and powerless to do anything about it. The local hospitals, police, and judges were complicit in the scheme, being paid off either in cash or with adoptions of their own. Tann charged large amounts of money for the adoptions and then often went back to extort more from the families while threating to take back the children that they had grown to love. The children that weren't adoptable due to sickness or age or behavior were either left to die or murdered outright. It is estimated that 500 children died at the home. Tann died in 1950 before she could be held accountable for her crimes. Through volunteer agencies some families were able to be reunited over the years, but it is a tiny percentage of those affected.

While awful and tragic, this book is very well written and draws the reader in to understand these children's stories. I felt like this was hard to read, but the historical fiction was very good.