The compelling, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal—some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate’s bestselling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 … offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents—hiding the fact that many weren’t orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.
The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families.
Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. Christie and Wingate tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art meeting life, many of the long-silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with the authors to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children’s Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results.
Advance praise for Before and After
“In Before and After, authors Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate tackle the true stories behind Wingate’s blockbuster Before We Were Yours, of the orphans who survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. With a journalist’s keen eye and a novelist’s elegant prose, Christie and Wingate weave together the stories that inspired Before We Were Yours with the lives that were changed as a result of reading the novel. Readers will be educated, enlightened, and enraptured by this important and flawlessly executed book.”—Pam Jenoff, author of The Orphan’s Tale and The Lost Girls of Paris
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Truly fascinating accounts of relatives lost and found, and of the reverberations through generations of countless families caused by a single person’s greed, these stories of strength, hope, and uncertainty will remain with me.
This is a follow up to Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. I loved that book and knew I wanted to read this one. I was fascinated as well as heartbroken reading the stories told by actual men and women that were adopted through the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. I still find it hard to believe that this actually happened in this country, and that many families were torn apart and lied to all because of one evil woman, Georgia Tann. I found this book very moving and well written. I highly recommend it.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy
If you read Before We were Yours by Lisa Wingate you will want to read this book. This is real-life experiences from interviews compiled by Authors Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate of the children taken years ago from their birth families.
These talented, caring authors met and bonded with those families who told first-hand the tale of the Tennessee Children’s Society. It is a story of triumph over tragedy. It is a retelling of human trafficking of children, sometimes snatched from their parents and sold to unsuspecting families who often provided loving homes. Not all were reports of shattered lives broken apart. Some had wonderful childhoods, despite being separated from birth families. Some were left for years wondering who they were related to. The amazing triumph of the mending of lives, discovering and reuniting years later with their siblings was encouraging. It is fascinating to think a novel, based on actual events, reunited real families.
Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate blended their talents to tell this story and to reunite people, and give them an opportunity to tell their life story. Well worth reading, beauty from ashes. I thank the publisher for providing an ARC copy that did not require a review. It is a satisfying 5 star read.
Truth is better than fiction, and alas fiction is about to come true, and these wonderful authors share their experiences and lives with us.
Yes, I read “Before We Were Yours, along with a million other readers, and the feeling that book evoked are magnified here as we put names to the people that lives were forever changes. The evil perpetrated by Georgian Tann, and others all in the name of greed, and the shattered lives she left in her wake.
Now we know why the first book was written, the power it held to let people go forward with their lives. With some it has opened doors to lost family, with others a method of closure, and others a type of healing with others of similar experiences.
Is justice served? That is unanswered, the main instigator died years ago, and I believe she got what she deserved, but we know many more were involved, and they had to live with what they did no matter how they tried to justify their actions.
A great addition to the first book, and yes, fiction meets fact.
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Random House, and was not required to give a positive review.
I loved Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. I was excited when I received an ARC from NetGalley and Ballantine Books in exchange for an honest review. This book is a non-fiction account of adoptees who Georgia Tann placed. It is not a book delving into Georgia Tann; It is a book about the remarkable adoptees and their journies to find their past. It is also not a book to be read in one setting or even two settings.
Authors Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate interviewed adoptees who contacted them. Many gathered at a reunion to share their journeys. I cried, and I laughed with their stories. It was so interesting how each adoptee found themselves, set up relationships with relatives they found each in their own way.
I strongly recommend this thoughtful book.
BEFORE AND AFTER is a non-fiction, emotional testament to the power of story-telling to entertain, inform, promote healing and form connections.
In her historical novel BEFORE WE WERE YOURS Lisa Wingate told the story of a fictional family who fell into the far-reaching network of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and its director, Georgia Tann. The widespread popularity of the novel led many adoptees to contact Wingate and share their own stories.
Wingate enlisted the help of journalist Judy Christie to collect and catalog the stories. Together with adoptees, they planned a reunion of survivors of the TCHS to coincide with the first anniversary of the release of her historical novel. BEFORE AND AFTER is a compilation of survivors’ stories and an account of this emotional reunion in Memphis, site of Tann’s orphanage.
Yet the book is so much more. It beautifully illustrates how the act of “telling their story” helped resolve the sense of loss felt by, and foster connections among, those known as “Georgia Tann babies”. As stated in the book, “we never lose those whose stories remain with us.”
I strongly recommend BEFORE AND AFTER not only for established Wingate fans, but for anyone who wants to read an uplifting book about the resiliency of the human spirit
Before and After by Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate is a remarkable book. It is a must read for readers of Before We Were Yours.
It answers so many of the questions raised about the adopted children of Georgia Tann’s Tennessee Children’s Home Society. We get to hear their struggles and their triumphs.
It is an emotional and inspirational book. Before We Were Yours is a work of historical fiction, and Before and After is non-fiction. The stories in the book are told by the adoptees and by some of their children.
I highly recommend this book because it highlights the struggles of the adoptees and their strength to pursue their identities. Thank you to all the adoptees who shared their stories and made this book possible.
Thank you #Netgalley and #RandomHousePublishinghouse for approving my request for an ARC. All opinions expressed in this review are solely my own.
Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society is written by Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate. It is the companion novel, of sorts, to the fictional story Before We Were Yours. I do not feel you have to read Before We Were Yours to enjoy Before and After. Before We Were Yours, written by Lisa Wingate, brought to light Georgia Tann’s hideous crimes. In the book, Before and After, we hear from the adoptees that were forever changed by the Tennessee Children’s Home Society (TCHS), Georgia Tann and her many co-conspirators. These brave men and women graciously share their family’s stories of sadness, triumph, and reconnection in Before and After.
“How can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been?”
Abraham Lincoln
I won’t be sharing any of the personal stories in my review. I feel that the stories are the heart and soul of Before and After and should be experienced first-hand. However, I will share my thoughts and emotions. The emotions I experienced while reading this book ranged from sheer joy to deep sadness and were felt to the depths of my soul. I can’t imagine the courage it took for these fifteen people and their families to share their stories with the world. Accounts that are so important to be told, so that this type of appalling treatment of innocent children and their families are never repeated. I applaud these two authors for sharing these incredibly heart-breaking stories in the most compassionate way possible. I could feel the connection; through their writing, these two women had with all the people they interviewed for this book. I can only imagine the tears that were shed while they spoke with these heroic people. I know I shed many tears while reading these heart-breaking stories, but there were also many smiles.
These horrible crimes began in 1924 and continue until 1950. How did five thousand children, many of whom were not orphans, arrive in the clutches of Georgia Tann? Why was this allowed to happen for almost thirty years? Why did no one speak up? And how did an estimated five hundred children succumb to the neglect that was rampant in TCHS? These are just some of the questions that Before and After conjured up in my mind.
Before and After recounts how Georgia Tann kidnapped babies and children from poor families and frightened unwed pregnant women, then sold them to and wealthy prominent families. Many of these families were respected powerful politicians and well-known celebrities. Other times Tann would tell these parents that their child had died during or soon after birth. These babies and children were then sold like commodities all over the United States. Tann was a devious woman and covered her crimes well. She would often falsify birth records to protect herself and her co-conspirators. This made it almost impossible for birth families to find each other later in life.
Georgia Tann built her empire on the misfortune, tears, and sorrow of the mothers and fathers from whom she stole these children. Her greed had no boundaries. In just the last ten years of her life, Tann profited over five hundred thousand dollars; This would be about between five and ten million in today’s dollar.
Before and After is a story that is horrific in one sense and uplifting in another. This book speaks directly to what the human spirit can endure. A story that must be shared with the world, so something like this never happens again. I highly recommend this book.
** Please note the quotes in my review are subject to change once the book is published**
*** I kindly received this galley by way of NetGalley/publisher/author. I was not contacted, asked, or required to leave a review. I received no compensation, financial or otherwise. I have voluntarily read this book, and this review is my honest opinion. ***
This novel is a sequel to Lisa Wingate’s best selling novel, Before We Were Yours. I loved Before We Were Yours and was deeply touched by story line featuring the fictional Foss family and other children stolen from their birth parents to be sold to “more fitting parents” by the Memphis based Tennessee Children’s Home Society in the early to mid-1900s.
Though the #1 New York Times best seller Before We Were Yours was a fictional tale, it was based on the very real and tragic events that occurred at the hands of Georgia Tann and her employees
with connections to politicians, celebrities, powerful institutions and influential people throughout the nation.
Thousands of children were literally stolen from their parents who were deemed by Ms. Tann to be less than capable of raising their children based on her opinion of their socio-economic standing or other shortcomings, then were neglected or abused and suffered deeply by separation from parents and beloved siblings. Others were left to die if they were ill or deemed inappropriate for adoption.
The black-market sales of these innocent children to the rich, powerful and/or famous clients of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society made Georgia Tann a very wealthy and powerful woman. Unfortunately, she died before she could be fully prosecuted for her criminal activities.
When I heard there was a follow-up novel based upon the real-life stories of some of the victims who survived their experiences with the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, I couldn’t wait to read it! Before and After is an incredible story, and while it can be read as a stand alone book, in my opinion, I would recommend reading it after Before We Were Yours.
Lisa Wingate and Judy Christie have compiled the heartbreaking and often heartwarming stories of fifteen adoptees, many in the last years of their lives who participated in a gathering where they shared very personal stories of searching for lost siblings and/or parents, feelings of loss, emptiness and longing, looking for answers to life-long questions and discussing the effects Georgia Tann’s actions had on their lives.
Some of these adoptees were prompted by their children or grandchildren to search for their birth families. There are stories of reunions – some happy, some tragic. Photos, excerpts from letters, newspaper ads for children and other historical documents which bring new insights into Georgia Tann’s exploitation of the mothers and families whose children she stole as well as prospective parents to whom she sold these children, including extortion, illegal or incomplete adoptions, and so much more.
This is is a novel not to be missed. It chronicles a tragic and shameful period in American history which occurred amid world wars, the great depression, the rise of the film industry in Hollywood, as well as growing political corruption and influence in our Country.
These stories needed to be brought to light, shared, discussed and kept alive. The over-arching theme of the accounts shared by the adoptees and their families is strength, overcoming insurmountable obstacles and the longing for family connections. I highly recommend Before and After and am grateful to Lisa Wingate and Julie Christie for making it possible.
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Before and After by Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate
Before We Were Yours became more than just a bestseller. It became a life changer. It took a real situation—Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home Society—and put fictional faces on the children to tell a story of what could have been. Families are torn apart so this evil woman could profit from it. Commodities to be bought…and returned if they didn’t fit right.
Before and After takes it a step further and puts the real faces on the true story. Some with happy endings…many without. This book records those stories from those now-adult children. Many have always known they didn’t quite “fit in” and that something was missing.
This book brings those adults who are able back to Memphis for a reunion. They can meet other “survivors” and tell their stories. I found it hard to put the book down. In my case, I also needed tissues handy. Georgia Tann was a greedy woman, she didn’t care who she destroyed to get rich. Yes, many of the children had good lives…but the cost was high. I highly recommend this book and if you haven’t read Before We Were Yours, I suggest reading it first.
**Received a copy from the publisher for an honest review
https://justjudysjumbles.blogspot.com/2014/01/lisa-wingate-book-list.html
Even though Before We Were Yours was a work of fiction, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the real families who were the victims of Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home society. Were any of the siblings reunited, were any of the parents able to see their children again? What kinds of scars were left behind? When Before We Were Yours was published, it garnered a lot of attention from the public, and it also provided insight to adoptees regarding their personal stories. Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate met with some of these families, listening to their stories, documenting their family histories, and bringing some of these families together. Their accounts are sad, as you’d expect, but they also show resilience and determination. I loved reading these stories…I was incredibly moved and often brought to ears by not only what the adoptees endured, but what was learned about the birth mothers as well. Before and After is the perfect follow up to Before We Were Yours, and I applaud the authors for their compassion and persistence in sharing these poignant stories with us.
I’d long anticipated this non-fiction follow up to the blockbuster novel Before We Were Yours. When it arrived in the mail, my intention was to devour it in one day so I could post an early review. By page 18, I knew that was impossible. The stories—the real life stories—of the surviving adoptees of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society heralded in Lisa Wingate’s work of fiction slammed me with such emotion that I knew I could only read in short segments, a story or two, before I had to stop and catch my breath. At once, I was struck by how being sent from the children’s home marked each of their lives: the constant feeling that something was different or that they’d been rejected. It didn’t stop there, though, as the effects trickled down to future generations. It made me reflect in a new way on adoption and its effects, the constant nagging that perhaps they had birth parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles they knew nothing of.
While this unsettling feeling of rejection was a uniting factor, there were myriad ways their lives panned out. Many believed they were better off being adopted, others had hard lives in dysfunctional families, and a large majority grew up as only children. It certainly made me grateful for my own two sisters and our first cousins—all thirty of them!
Before and After, though, does more than just play on the emotions with poignant stories written so deftly by Judy and Lisa. The overarching theme is that of community, giving the adoptees a voice, and a venue to connect with other adoptees via a weekend hosted by the authors. There is joy and sadness, apprehension and hope, healing and camaraderie, and ultimately comfort in knowing they aren’t alone. I will be thinking of them for a long time.
For readers, I would suggest reading Before We Were Yours first for context and a better understanding of the unspeakable acts Georgia Tann of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society inflicted on families and children for nearly three decades.
Brava! to Judy and Lisa for this stellar work.
This book is set to publish October 22, 2019. The publisher provided me a copy for an honest review.
Thank you to the author and publisher for giving me an ARC of this book to read. If you read Before We Were yours then Before and After is a must read. These are the real people. The babies and familes who’s lives were changed forever by one evil and terrible woman. It is amazing what transpired after Lisa wrote this book. All the people who contacted her saying this was their life in her novel. It was beautiful, touching, sad yet uplifting. Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate detailed these events and I was deeply moved by this book. So grateful to have been able to read this incredible book.
I was so excited to receive an advance copy of “Before and After” that I immediately sat down and devoured it all in one day. The book is a collaboration of Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate, both authors with journalism backgrounds. After Lisa Wingate wrote her New York Times bestseller book “Before We Were Yours” which features a fictional account of a family torn apart landing the children in the Tennessee Children’s Home Society (TCHS), she could not imagine the impact it would have. It’s a heart wrenching story based on the real history of the TCHS run by Georgia Tann who became rich by selling babies and young children during the years of 1923-1950. “Before We Were Yours” was well written and touched me deeply. When I heard Lisa was teaming up with a friend to release a follow-up to her book with real life stories of people whose lives were touched by this horrific part of Tennessee history I was intrigued to learn more and couldn’t wait to read their new book. After “Before We Were Yours” hit the bookstores, Lisa began getting emails and letters from people relating their’s or a parent’s stories from being a TCHS child. Lisa, knowing these stories were important to be told, contacted her friend Judy Christie to help her with the task of gathering these stories. Judy spent countless hours interviewing and recording stories from anyone willing to share them with her, while Lisa continued meeting more people impacted by TCHS on her book tour. This book is a compilation of all these wonderful stories that deserve to be told. Most of the kids were taken from poor families and placed in homes of wealthier but many times dysfunctional families. Some were stolen from hospitals and the mothers were told their baby died. Some were taken from their own homes while playing in their own yards. It will amaze you what this woman managed to get away with for over 30 years aided by many other prominent people. You will feel for each of the stories from those who lived through this as they gather for a reunion to share information with each other. If you haven’t read “Before We Were Yours”, I highly recommend it either before or after reading this book. Everyone has a story to tell and I’m thankful that these two wonderful ladies decided to tell these very important stories.
Every now and then I like to take a break from emotional fiction books, so I’ll switch to something non-fiction to put my heart on reset. Well, that wasn’t the case with Before and After. The real-life stories in this book are incredibly moving, memorable, and emotional.
I can’t fathom how Georgia Tann’s soul and heart was hardened so bristly that she dispassionately and mechanically stole and traded babies. I truly can’t fathom it. And I can only imagine the fear of the children as they were snatched away, and the desperation, pain, and lifelong heartbreak of the birth parents.
Her heartlessness and carelessness, and authorities turning a blind eye to her money-making horrendous “business” resulted in broken families, shattered parents, many children dying and being mistreated before finding a home, and others suffering awful upbringings once they did. Despite her evil schemes, some of the adoptees were raised by loving families.
* If you’ve read Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours, I highly recommend this non-fiction addition. It tells the real-life survival stories of victims of Georgia Tann and her Tennessee Children’s Home Society.
** If you haven’t read Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours, it would be highly beneficial to read it first. You won’t regret it. It caused every nerve ending in my body to prickle, and gave my soul the major f-e-e-l-s. With vivid scenes, remarkable characters, a momentous historical scandal, and lessons of faith, family, friendship, and freedom, it’s on my list of the most memorable, heart-searing books I’ve read.
Source: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley.
If you read the book, Before I Was Yours, by Lisa Wingate, you read a historical novel about an Orphanage run by Georgia Tann , which was a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis,Tennessee, between the 1920’s to 1950.
Lisa’s book, brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking, where much of the profit from the sale of the children went straight into Tann’s pocket, under the guise of transportation and court fees.
In this book Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate, documented the stories of 15 adoptees, who were now just finding out about what happened to them as children, or meeting for the first time with others who went through the same thing as they did.
Many have been able to find relatives, which was very hard as they had no real information to go on, names changed as babies and laws that blocked their search until recently.
This was a heart warming look at the resilience of many people as we get a view of what their lives were like both before and after their adoptions.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing
Group-Ballantine for the ARC of this book.
What an amazing book! These true stories of what happened during the time that Georgia Tann operated her unlicensed Tennessee orphanage after stealing babies, illegally talking the mothers into giving them up permanently instead of temporary foster care. There were many ways Tann got babies and children and hid them. This horrible place operated from 1924-1950.
It’s very sad what happened to discover many babies died that were sick or premature due to the neglect in the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. This book shares many true experiences by the adoptees and their families. It is the kind of book that I didn’t want to read yet I just knew I had to! The pain, agony, feelings and knowing something was missing these adoptees shared in their interviews is heart- wrenching. As I read to the end my heart felt heavy and I felt like I wanted to do something to help!
This book comes after Lisa Wingate’s novel, Before We Were Yours, and both books are amazing!