Georgia Tann and Lisa Wingate: The Duology

My book club chose Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate for book club last month when I wasn't around (I was doing colonoscopy prep). I had read it before and thought it was meh, but remember thinking the actual history was fascinating, so I wanted to read more about the history before I dove back in to Before We Were Yours. 

It turns out that Wingate had co-written a book with Judy Christie called Before and After, which was a non-fiction retelling of families who were impacted by the historical events of Before We Were Yours, so listened to that book first before I tackled Before We Were Yours again. 

From the 1920s until 1950, Georgia Tann was a social worker who ran a black market adoption business at the Tennessee Children's Home Society (TCHS - these are also the initials of my high school, so I sometimes found myself yanked out of the story with imaginary cheerleaders chanting them). She kidnapped babies and children to sell to people who would pay her way over the market rate for adoptions. Along the way children were neglected, physically and sexually abused, and even killed. 

In Before We Were Yours, we follow two timelines. In one timeline, the Foss family is torn apart one day when the parents go to the hospital to deliver twin babies and while the parents are gone, the other five children (four little girls and a baby boy) are kidnapped from their home and taken to TCHS. Rill, the oldest daughter, does her best to keep the siblings together, but watches as one by one they are adopted or go missing.  In the present timeline, we follow Avery Stafford, a politician's daughter who is attempting to figure out a mystery about her grandmother's life. 

I feel the exact same way about this book as I did when I read it in 2018. The scenes in the past with Rill and her family were compelling and interesting. Learning about TCHS and Tann's systematic abuse of children for profit was horrific, but I still was invested in what was going to happen to the Foss family.  But, man, those contemporary scenes with Avery were such a snooze. Avery is a very boring, entitled character and I just wanted to shake her and make her have some personality. 

My book club folks pretty much agreed with my assessment. Avery is terrible and the contemporary storyline was a snooze, but the historical stuff was fascinating. It was a good book club discussion (two of our participants were adopted from the same place in North Carolina - isn't that a crazy coincidence?) and it was fun because we ranged the gamut from people with children to people with stepchildren to people without children. Very good discussion considering the lameness of the book. 

Also, the writing style is just not my jam. Consider the following two passages:

The half moon hangs heavy, rocking on its back. Its twin rides the ripples in the rain barrel as I pass. (timestamp 8:27:10)

...the story vanishing like chalk art on a rainy day. I scramble after the running colors. (timestamp 9:29:39)

I do not want to even talk about the number of times "moon shadows" were mentioned in this book. Maybe other people like this type of writing, but I found it distracting from the other more prosaic portions of the book. 

Still a meh book. 3/5 stars

Lines of note:

Camelia's eaten enough soap to clean up the inside of a whale in her ten years. She's practically been raised on it. It's a wonder bubbles don't pour out her ears. (timestamp 1:28: 25)

This line made me laugh out loud. 

He smells of river water and sky, morning fog in the summer and frost and wood smoke in the winter. (timestamp 4:10:57)

This was evocative. 

"Well, that's 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 tradeoffs we think are best at the time." (timestamp 5:51:11)

Preach it. 

There is little doubt that the organization rescued many children from deplorable, dangerous circumstances or simply accepted children who were unwanted and placed them in loving homes. There is also little doubt that countless children were taken from loving parents without cause or due process and never seen again by their desperately grieving biological families. (timestamp 14:19:33, from A Note From the Author)

I think this was the only time that Wingate really talked about how confusing Tann was as a historical character. It seems like she started with good intentions and did help orphans. What went wrong? I think that's an interesting question I'd like someone to write a historical fiction book about. 

Hat Mentions:

A debonair elderly gentleman in a tweed bowler hat...(timestamp 16:58)

...pretty velvet hat with the feathers on top...(timestamp 1:22:52)

"I take this hat."(timestamp 1:23:17)

"You ain't takin' my mama's hat nowheres." (timestamp 1:23:52)

"You leave my mama's hat," she yells over Gabian squalling. (timestamp 1:26:29)

The midwife snatches Queenie's red hat from her basket, throws it down, and walks over it, her weight rocking the deck as she wobbles down the gangplank. (timestamp 1:27:50)

He grabs his hat off the hook and stomps out the door. (timestamp 2:22:38)

...can't make out his face under the hat...(timestamp 2:23:20)

A man's hat maybe? (timestamp 2:25:12)

A man's head, the outline of a hat...(timestamp 2:28:53)

I think of Queenie's red hat. (timestamp 3:25:45)

He shakes his head, then shrugs, indicating a hat, a vintage umbrellas with a dragon carved into the handle, and a pair of blue boat shoes. (timestamp 8:19:44)

...broad-brimmed hats. (timestamp 8:22:29)

She's holding her hat...(timestamp 8:22:42)

Overhead katydids and crickets give the sky a heartbeat and a million stars shine like far off campfires. 

In the moon shadows, I can't see his face, only the outline of his applejack hat and his knobby legs bent up like a frog's. (timestamp 8:28:17)

Even with the hats shading their faces...(timestamp 9:24:20)

...the story vanishing like chalk art on a rainy day. I scramble after the running colors. (timestamp 9:29:39)

The bright sun hats, the crisply ironed '60s sundresses...(timestamp 12:21:14)

...when a man in overalls and a straw hat comes chugging into a red and grey tractor...(timestamp 12:25:03)

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But, as I suggested before, I do think the stories of the children at TCHS are interesting - sometimes terrible, but I feel like there are lessons to be learned from them. So I did listen to Before and After, too. This might be a better book to have read than listened to because it seemed crazy frenetic to me. Each chapter seemed to switch back and forth in time and back and forth from different families and it was really hard to keep track of who was who. Maybe it would have been easier for me to track/take notes in a physical book. Non-fiction books with lots of characters can be challenging in this way.

Because of this book organization, it actually ended up being story after story after story and somehow instead of making the stories personal, it actually just ended up making everyone seem like a statistic and it got repetitive and boring and instead of highlighting the uniqueness of these people's lives and childhoods, I just started predicting what horrible thing they would say next like some sort of really dark BINGO card. 

I admire Wingate and Christie for building awareness of Tann and her perfidy, but I not-so-secretly wish someone else would also take on this topic. 

3/5 stars

Hat Mentions:

If everyone put their troubles in a hat, you'd want your own. (timestamp 2:52:29)

He is dressed in blue workpants and a chambray western shirt with snaps. On his feet he wears leather moccasins. He usually dons a cowboy hat...(timestamp 3:38:08)

... wears a stylish hat that is a cross between a fedora and a Stetson. (timestamp 5:52:23)