BeforeWe Were Yours by Lisa Wingate tells the story of a girl whose siblings were kidnapped
to be sold to families willing to pay top dollar for blonde orphans and a privileged
woman who stumbled onto the aftermath of this commerce in stolen children. A
moving story of courageous women, abuse of the powerless, and indifference of
the privileged.
In the
present day, Avery Stafford, daughter of a powerful political family discovered
an unexplained connection between her grandmother and May Crandall, a lady confined
to a nursing home after she was found living with her dead sister and abandoned
by her out-of-state children. Avery set out to explain this connection and, in
the process, uncovered a family secret.
In 1939,
Rill Foss, the oldest of five siblings, was kidnapped by Georgia Tann and her
Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Unsuccessfully, she did her twelve-year-old
best to protect them all from abuse, murder, and being sold into adoption. This
part of the story was based on actual events.
In 1939, the
Foss family included Briny and Queenie, the parents, and the five children:
Rill (12), Carmellia (10), Lark (6), Fern (4), and Gabion, the only boy, (2). They
lived on the Mississippi River in a shanty boat called Arcadia.
Avery was
engaged to an old family friend, Elliot. His mother Bitsy, and Avery’s mother
Honeybee were pressing them to set a date. When Elliot learned of Avery’s quest
to uncover the truth, he did his best to convince her to stop her investigation.
When he justified his pressure to halt her efforts declaring, “And that’s
because I love you and want what’s best for you,” the reader knew this
relationship was doomed. It took Avery bit longer to figure this out.
The story ended
with happiness, mirroring the author’s observation that when the scandal broke,
it did not generate a public outrage. “The general public sentiment was that
having been given over from poverty to privilege, the children were better off
where they were, no matter the circumstances of their adoptions.”
Geography:
Memphis is on the western border of Tennessee on the Mississippi River. Aiken South
Carolina is in the middle of the southern border of South Carolina (850 miles
from Memphis). Augusta Georgia is about 35 minutes south of Aiken. Edisto is a
South Carolina beach community about three hours east of Aiken.
Do not start
this book until you have sufficient time to quickly finish it. The middle is horrific
and will give nightmares.
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