Before We Were Yours - Lisa Wingate

This was a tough book to get through. I really dislike reading about cruelty to children. And I really dislike real people who are cruel to children. And so here's this book. It made me feel so many things. 

Before We Were Yours starts off in a Baltimore hospital where a Congressman's daughter has just suffered a stillborn birth but doesn't know it yet. Her desperate family want to fix it. Someone makes a call to Memphis. 

In present day, Avery Stafford is altering her life as a prosecutor to come back to South Carolina and hit the campaign trail with her ailing Senator father whose staff is looking for an heir apparent to his Senate seat. Avery is uncomfortable with the whole thing. Hers is a high stakes family, run mostly by her aggressive mother, Honeybee. In the background is a grandmother who's dementia has led to a nursing home placement. On a visit to a different nursing home, Avery meets May Crandall, who mistakes Avery for someone else. See, there's this blond curly hair thing that seems to be passed down from Grandma Judy.

So we whip back to the past, to a stormy night on the Mississippi river, when Queenie, aboard her shantyboat home, the Arcadia, is having a terrible time birthing twins. When all hope is lost and Briny must take Queenie to the hospital, the other five children, Rill, Camellia, Lark, Fern and Gabion, are left on the boat with a family friend to await their parent's return. 

Unfortunately, this is 1939 in Memphis and there is a real life demon, Georgia Tann, walking around, snatching children from poor families and selling them to rich ones to make herself wealthy. She snatches up the children and places into a boarding home for the Tennessee Children's Home Society. And there, well there is where all the bad things happen and I really just don't like thinking about it so you'll have to take my word for it that it's very very bad. 

What all this has to do with Avery and Grandma Judy you can probably guess but it all unravels over time. As Avery learns the truth about Grandma Judy, she discovers some things about herself as well. And while there are some sweet moments in the book, they are mostly bittersweet because although this is a work of fiction, it's based on real stories of things that happened to real children under the charge of Georgia Tann. That Georgia Tann got to grow old and die of cancer is monumentally unfair. That my Tennessee government had a chance to make life better for these children, but failed is also unfair. 

So go out, help a child, volunteer your time and talent to organizations that make life better for orphans and kids in foster care. And also, if you like crying, you can read this book.

4.5/5 Stars.