... written by Lisa Wingate. Recommended by my cousin, the teacher of reading! A bit of research on the Internet will leave you astounded by the truthiness upon which the story is based. There was a woman so self-centered, greedy and above the law that children were actually stolen from their parents, taken into facilities where they were sold to couples desperate to start families. Georgia Tann, based in Tennessee had a network of people who would procure youngsters and deliver them, forlorn, weeping, frightened to her homes where they would be given to parents who would pay for illegal adoptions, then pay again when threatened. She ran the orphanages with an iron will, where children were subjected to isolation, deprivation, hunger to force them into cooperative behavior. Apparently the authorities were paid to look the other way for many years, before Tann's nefarious dealings were brought to an end.
Wingate did her research to uncover this stain on the history of TN, and used her findings to write a tale of families broken and mended. The fictional account of a nearly destitute family living on a small boat on the Mississippi River near Memphis came apart when the mother was taken by the dad to a hospital for a complicated birth. The children left behind were spirited away and deposited at the orphanage, eventually separated and sold to different families. Two of the daughters were reunited, and as adults finally reconnected with two others.
The revelations at the end of the tale bring it to a bittersweet close. It is sweet story but difficult to reconcile the realities of that bygone era with the considerations now given to adoptees, birth-parents and rights of discovery now legally enforced. That woman with all the power to forcefully dismantle families came to a sad ending, dying of cancer. But the truth of her influence to alter lives on a whim, for profit continues to have a profound effect on people who will always wonder about their origins, and family histories that have so many blanks and question marks.
A brief quote from the introduction: "In my multi-fold ears of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don't intend to hurt anyone. It's merely a terrible by-product of surviving." I guess I have to agree - wanting to believe there are really not many deliberately malicious people in the world, but most who do evil are often overwhelmed by circumstance. Or opportunity?
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