Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

 🎧 Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate is both captivating and riveting. 

Based on true events that took place in the US during the first half of the Twentieth Century at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. The Society was a front for a broad black market adoption ring, headed by Georgia Tann, who engaged in child trafficking through kidnapping children from hospitals or homes of the poor, unwed, or mentally ill.

The children were taken into the orphanage, papers falsified, and illegally adopted out to wealthy parents without their knowledge of the children’s background or histories. The orphanage was State backed without the State’s knowledge of illegal activities and child trafficking.. 

The characters are very well developed and you will find yourself quickly intertwined in their lives; loving them, cheering for them, and crying for them (and in Tann’s case, despising her and her cronies).

The book is told from two POV from past to present until the stories converge.

I was hooked from the start. A hard read but a captivating one. This may be traumatizing to victims of child and sex abuse or families who have lost children. 

I listened to the audiobook version and the narration by Emily Rankin and Catherine Tabernacle was very well performed. 

RATING:

📕Story: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🎧Performance: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

📚Genre(s): audiobook, historical fiction, book club, fiction

CONTENT:

Sex: Implied rape and molestation but no graphic description. Predatory behavior

Language: No swearing

Violence: Birthing process with complications. Kidnapping. Child physical and sexual abuse—mostly implied without in-depth detail. Death. Starvation.