I recently took over running the book club at the library where I work, a book club that has been going for over twenty years and is made up entirely of woman who are significantly older than myself. The books they read are books they vote on, so needless to say, they choices are not titles I would typically pick up. In addition, the books are primarily all somewhat contemporary. As a general rule, I don't read much if any contemporary adult fiction, so it's been interesting to get into the books. This is the first one that I feel worthy of sharing with you all.
In the not so distant past, just over 80 years ago, there was an orphanage called the Tennessee Children's Home Society that matched wealthy families with children in need of a home. But what if those children weren't in need of a home? What if they had loving families and were stolen from those families and essentially sold to the highest bidder?
Told in alternating time periods, Lisa Wingate's powerful novel is horrifyingly based on the very real situation that many children of the time period found themselves in. A journalist at heart, Wingate based her story on the mountain of evidence that had been uncovered to reveal how the orphanage had been run like a racketeering empire, using a network of legislators, police, and social workers to take children from poor families, preferably attractive children and place them into the homes of the well-connected, who were lied to and left in the dark about the circumstances that brought these children into the home's custody.
May (formerly Rill) was twelve when the police took her and her siblings from their boat home on the river and delivered them to the abusive home. As she struggles, and fails, to keep her family together, we experience the heartbreak and injustice of her situation...a situation which she hid until a present day granddaughter of May's youngest sister uncovers the truth.
May's story is told with tenderness and grit, bringing her 12 year old self to life in the spirit of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. The modern day story reads more like a cleverly unfolding tale of family intrigue, which feels slightly less literary, but doesn't detract from the overall experience.
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