Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Kay Lynn Hartmann

Author:  Lisa Wingate

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

342 pages, published June 6, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Before We Were Yours follows the stories of two families, separated by several generations that intertwine as a result of the actions of a nefarious children’s adoption home.  The first story starts in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee and focuses on twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings who live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat.  When their father and mother leave them alone on a stormy night to go to the hospital for the mother’s problematic birth of twins, Rill and her siblings are stolen and placed in the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage. Fast forward to modern day South Carolina and we meet the wealthy and privileged Avery Stafford, a successful federal prosecutor with a handsome fiancé.  Avery, who is being groomed to replace her cancer stricken Senator father, discovers some incongruent facts about her Grandmother Judy and starts down a path that will reveal some long-hidden family secrets that connect them to the Foss family.

Quotes 

“In my multifold years of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don’t intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving.”

 

“One of the best things a father can do for his daughter is let her know that she has met his expectations. My father did that for me, and no amount of effort on my part can fully repay the debt.”

 

“But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse.”

 

“We plan our days, but we don’t control them.”

 

“And if you haven’t got a single book, the idea of putting your hand on one is like Christmas and a birthday rolled up together.”

 

“Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn’t suit the moment.”

 

“A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music. To hear the tune, she must only stop talking. To herself, I mean. We’re always trying to persuade ourselves of things.”

 

“I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not one that goes on forever and cuts all the way to the bone.”

 

“The good life demands a lot of maintenance”

 

“one of the paradoxes of life. You can’t have it all. You can have some of this and some of that or all of this and none of that. We make the trade-offs we think are best at the time.”

My Take

Before We Were Yours was an absorbing read that I whipped through in a few days.  I found the characters to be very relatable and the both plot lines held my interest (although I preferred the older one that focused on the injustice to the Foss children).  I was also interested to discover that the central story of the corrupt and reprehensible Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage is based on a true story.  It is hard to believe that child stealing, neglect and even murder occurred in our recent past.