Before We Were Yours

The Family Plot

Lisa Wingate’s bestselling 'Before We Were Yours' is based on a true events that took place in Memphis, Tennessee in the early years of the twentieth century. It cannot be imagined how a woman ran a baby stealing and adoption racket for many years without getting caught. She simply picked up poor children—particularly good-looking ones-- conned their often illiterate parents into signing away their rights, and sold them to rich patrons who wanted to adopt kids.

Twelve-year-old Rill Foss is the oldest of five siblings, living with their poor but loving parents on a shanty boat. When their father takes his wife mother suffering from a difficult labour to the hospital, the children are abducted by a policeman and taken to an orphanage. They are registered under different names, so that they cannot be traced.

In the orphanage, they suffer starvation and unbelievable cruelty, but because the Foss kids, with the exception of one sister, are all blonde cherubs, Georgia Tann, who runs the child trafficking scam, knows she can make a fortune off them. Rill, renamed May, puts up with inhumane conditions in the hope that their parents will come and rescue them. Her sister is raped and killed, all but one of her siblings sold; somehow she manages to stay close to one sister, Fern, when they are both adopted by a loving couple. Rill makes an attempt to escape, and after a heartbreaking return to the family’s boat, she gives up fighting fate.

In the present, she is a disruptive new resident in an old people’s home, where she encounters Avery Stafford, a lawyer and the politically ambitious daughter of a senator. Avery comes to believe that there is some connection between her grandmother Judy, suffering from dementia and May Crandall. Despite the warning of her childhood friend and fiancé, Elliott, she starts an investigation into her family’s past. She also meets the handsome Trent Turner, who helps in her mission.

Hovering over Avery’s near-perfect life is appalling tragedy of the past. Rill/May’s story, bleak though it is, has a little girl’s courage and hope. Avery’s mild trauma simply cannot compare. What is quite shattering is that Georgia Tann and her associates were never punished, because there were too many powerful families interested in covering up the scandal.

Before We Were Yours

By Lisa Wingate

Publisher: Ballantine

Pages: 352