Before We Were Yours
Lisa Wingate, 2017
Historical fiction Contemporary fictionLiterary fiction
Two timelines braid a senator’s daughter with a child caught in a real adoption scandal—and the family secrets that still decide who belongs. The novel moves between two eras with a warm, lyrical voice, carrying family tenderness and a steady undercurrent of dread.
Feels like dread and serenity. About family, memory and adventure.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy historical fiction that braids a present-day family search with a child’s story from the past. The two timelines can ask for patience, and the adoption scandal material is painful.
Why read it
It gives you a vivid sense of how family secrets shape lives, and it makes a real chapter of adoption history feel personal rather than abstract.
A page from the book
A stranger’s grip can feel like a message you haven’t learned to read.
Someone touches my hand and wrist, fingers encircling me so unexpectedly that I jerk away, then stop myself, so as not to cause a scene. The grip is cold and bony and trembling, but surprisingly strong. I turn to see the woman from the garden. She straightens her humped back and gazes up at me through eyes the color of the hydrangeas back home at Drayden Hill—a soft, clear blue with a lighter mist around the edges. Her pleated lips tremble. Lisa Wingate.Wingate drew on the real Tennessee Children’s Home Society, where Georgia Tann placed children from poor families into adoptive homes.
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Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Before We Were Yours for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy historical fiction that braids a present-day family search with a child’s story from the past. The two timelines can ask for patience, and the adoption scandal material is painful.
- What is Before We Were Yours like?
- The novel moves between two eras with a warm, lyrical voice, carrying family tenderness and a steady undercurrent of dread. Feels like dread and serenity. About family, memory and adventure.
- What should I read after Before We Were Yours?
- If you liked Before We Were Yours, try We Were Liars (E. Lockhart), The Things We Cannot Say (Kelly Rimmer) and Sharp Objects (Gillian Flynn).
A taste of the feed
A compliment that treats love as a kind of reading.
Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.
We Were Liars · E. Lockhart
What goes missing when a family stops asking questions?
What happens when stories like theirs are lost? What happens when there’s no one left to pass your experience on to, or you just can’t bring yourself to share it?
The Things We Cannot Say · Kelly Rimmer
The photograph you can no longer explain.
On the table by the door sat a photo of a preteen me holding Marian at about age seven. We’re both laughing. She has her eyes wide open in surprise, I have mine scrunched shut. I’m squeezing her into me, her short skinny legs dangling over my knees. I can’t remember the occasion or what we were laughing about. Over the years it’s become a pleasant mystery. I think I like not knowing.
Sharp Objects · Gillian Flynn
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