Hope everyone had a really wonderful Christmas with family and friends and that you have an equally smashing New Years Eve.
A few weeks ago we met at Susan's beautiful home and had our yearly Christmas brunch. Bonnie Jean, Lindsay, Pam B., Pat, along with myself and Susan were in attendance. Again, thank you Susan for hosting us, we really had a wonderful time and, those of us who stuck around to hot tub were there until 4:30!
Our book this month was BEFORE WE WERE YOURS. It was a pretty quick read and well received by all of us. The story was based on a real woman (Georgia Tann) and true events, which took place over the course of thirty years (1920's-50's) in Tennessee in which mostly small children and infants were, in some cases, quite literally, stolen from their destitute parents. Parents of new borns could also be conned at the hospital, upon the baby's delivery by signing papers they did not understand and which gave custody to Georgia Tann's whose agency was known as the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Even though this story was fiction it gave a very good insight into what these children and their families probably experienced. Georgia Tann and her staff were neither kind nor loving and the stories that would eventually come to light are pretty harrowing.
In all honesty, we didn't really spend a lot of time discussing the book but, all agreed that we liked it very much. The book was told in two narratives, one past and one in the present. We found the story about the kidnapped children from the Foss family riveting. The arch, tying the two stories together, between the children who were kidnapped back in 1939 to the granddaughter of one of those girls was well done and both stories were very good.
Collectively our rating was a 4.08.
