Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

I have been wanting to read Before We Were Yours for quite some time.  I’ve been waiting for the holds to die down at the library so I could select it for my book club.  The holds were finally at a reasonable level so I picked it for our March selection.

Before We Were Yours is the type of book that you pick up and you just can’t stop reading.  It was an excellent novel that is told in two time periods, present day and 1939.  Both stories were equally intriguing.

The historic 1939 story took place in a shanty boat on the Mississippi.  The Foss family is tight knit and loves their life on the river.  Twelve-year-old Rill is the oldest and keeps a watch over her family when her father takes her mother to Memphis to the hospital during a difficult birth of twins.  While they are gone, the police visit and take the children to the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage.  The children think it is temporary, but they soon realize that life at the orphanage is a horror and they may never see their parents again.  Will Rill be able to keep her family together?

In present day South Carolina, Avery Stafford is a successful lawyer and the daughter of a Senator and prestigious political family.  She is engaged and moving along on her family’s predetermined path for life, when she stumbles across a mystery.  She is visiting a nursing home for an event and meets May Crandall who mistakes her for someone named “Fern.”  May also has a picture that looks eerily like Avery’s Grandma Judy.  Grandma Judy is suffering from Alzheimer’s and was recently put into a fancy assisted living.  Who is May Crandall and how does she know Grandma Judy?

I was riveted and distressed by this novel.  I loved the shanty boat lifestyle on the Mississippi.  I didn’t even realize that this lifestyle existed!  On the other hand, I was horrified to read how children were treated in the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage.  I can’t imagine being a parent and having your children taken from you because you were poor.  It made me realize that my own grandparents living on a farm during the depression could have been victims if they lived further south.  I think this novel will give us plenty to talk about at book club this month.

Did you enjoy Before We Were Yours?  What was your favorite part of the novel?

Favorite Quote:

“The reality is that his decisions for Grandma Judy are in no way political.  We’re just like other families.  Every available avenue is paved with guilt, lined with pain, and pockmarked with shame.”

Overall, Before We Were Yours is an excellent novel that looks into the fraught history of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society Orphanage when Georgia Tann took children from poor families and sold them to the rich.  It is also a great look into families.  What makes a family?

Book Source:  Purchased at Costco.