Orphan Train without the train

Before We Were Yours topped several “Best Of” lists in 2017 including its win for Best Historical Fiction in the Goodreads Choice Award. I lucked out and found a copy at my library on its “Too Hot To Hold” shelf. This was a good book but not a great book; it had a slow start but picked up towards the end. It’s pretty clear how the past and present are connected but it’s a well written story.

“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.”

In 1939 Rill Foss and her siblings are taken off their Mississippi River shantyboat and taken to the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage after their parents go to the hospital when Queenie, the mother, has complications from her most recent pregnancy. The people at the orphanage are vile creatures who starve the children and punish them by locking them in a closet for misbehaving. The Foss children, and the rest of the children in Georgia Tann’s care, are given new names and new backstories in an effort to adopt them out to prominent families despite having parents who desperately want them back.

In present day South Carolina Avery Stafford, heir to a political dynasty, has returned home to be close to her sick father and her grandmother whose memory is beginning to fade. A strange conversation prompts Avery to investigate her grandmother’s past with the help of a new friend whose grandfather may have had relevant information but passed away.

Like Christina Baker Kline, Wingate embellished her story with kernels of truth. This is a well researched novel and the kernels of truth are the most interesting part; I think this is why Rill’s story is stronger than Avery’s. From a narrative perspective I think I preferred Orphan Train but Before We Were Yours deserves the praise it has received. After finishing the fictitious story of the Foss children I spent an hour reading articles about the despicable Georgia Tann and it is hard to believe something so terrible happened to so many children in the not too distant past.