This what I like to call a good “coffee table” book. It’s one of those books to have sitting on your coffee table that you can pick up and use as a conversation starter.
This is the nonfiction follow up to the novel Before We Were Yours. The book starts with Lisa Wingate seeking to reunite the surviving adoptees with other surviving victims of Georgia Tann’s Tennessee Children’s Home Society who have suffered silently. After travelling to Memphis, Lisa and journalist Judy Christie gather with the adoptees and their families who tell their adoption story. This book is the recollection, memories, and artifacts of children who were adopted through Tennessee Children’s Home Society that was run by the nefarious Georgia Tann. The stories told are the stories of hope when life has been stolen. While some of the adoption stories deeply benefited the child, the cards dealt to other children were not always in their favor. Sometimes sweet and sometimes appalling, each separate account gives the adoptees a voice that will not be forgotten.
“To this day I search Ancestry.com and use my DNA to discover if there is some familial connection somewhere. If I could just learn the truth of my mother’s story, I might find some peace.” -Email from an adoptee’s child
The chapters are organized by adoptee, and each chapter tells the story of a child who was adopted through the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. It revolves around their adoption, what happened to them in their adopted home, and the reunion with their birth family much later in life (if one occurred). The book is full of supportive photocopies and photographs.
This does not entail memories of Georgia Tann or the heinous acts that occurred at her orphanage. There is only one adoptee in this book who can account for remembering Georgia Tann, but it does not focus on Tann or the orphanage environment; rather it centers around the adoption, her new family, and the reunion with the biological family.
I recommend this to readers interested in true crime and adoption, and for readers that enjoyed “Before We Were Yours”. If you have not read “Before We Were Yours”, I recommend knowing a bit about Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home Society beforehand.
Many thanks to Random House- Ballantine, Lisa Wingate, Judy Christie, and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my review.
For more information on the subject:
About Georgia Tann
Baby Snatcher