Before We Were Yours: A Novel

In 1939 Memphis, twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. When their father takes their mother to the hospital one night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers forcibly remove the children and place them in a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage. Despite promises of reunion with their parents, the Foss children discover the dark reality of the facility and its cruel director. Rill struggles to keep her siblings together amid danger and uncertainty. In present-day Aiken, South Carolina, Avery Stafford is a successful federal prosecutor with wealth, privilege, and an upcoming wedding. When she returns home to help her father through a health crisis, a chance encounter raises questions about her family's hidden past. This prompts Avery to investigate her family history, a journey that may lead to either devastation or redemption. Based on the real-life scandal involving Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization who kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families across the country, this novel explores how paths diverge but the heart remembers where it belongs.