Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Sisters Fiction, Mothers & Children Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction
Format - Paperback
Length - 368 pages
*Amazon Blurb*
Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.
Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.
Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.
*My Review*
This book was chosen for the January read for my local book group. I wasn't sure I was going to like it since it's not my normal genre, but I have been trying to read outside of my comfort spot. I'm definitely glad I did. Though this book is fiction, it is based on real life events. You can find out more about the real life horror in Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society by Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate.
The story goes back and forth from when the Foss girls were young and the present day. I really enjoyed reading the book from Rill's point of view when she was a little girl. I hated when those chapters ended. The story pulls at your heart and makes you wonder how someone could be so cruel and do the things they did to little children and their families. I thought the present day chapters dragged on and seemed a bit too fairytale-ish.
No comments:
Post a Comment