Before We Were Yours

Two timelines run side by side. In 1939, twelve-year-old Rill Foss lives on the Arcadia, her family's shantyboat on the Mississippi River, along with her parents and four younger siblings. One night strangers take the children away, and they end up at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis.

There the director, Georgia Tann, decides which children go to which families. Rill uses everything she has to hold her brothers and sisters together.

The second timeline is set today. Avery Stafford works as a federal prosecutor and comes from a prominent family in Aiken, South Carolina. She goes home to support her father, a senator, through a health crisis. At a nursing home, an elderly woman she meets appears to know something about the Stafford family. With Trent Turner's help, Avery starts to follow a trail back through the generations.

The novel draws on the real scandal around Georgia Tann's adoption operation in Memphis. Ballantine brought it out in 2017, and it took the 2018 Southern Book Prize.

This is historical fiction built around family secrets. It is emotionally heavy, since much of it concerns children torn from their families, and it suits readers ready for that weight.