The release date for the English version of 'Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society' by
Judy Christie is Oct 2019. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Seven hours and fifty-seven minutes
The amazing, moving actual accounts of victims of a well-known adoption scandal, some of whom were reunited with their biological family after reading Lisa Wingate's best-selling book Before We Were Yours and discovering the truth.
Georgia Tann operated a baby-selling operation on the black market at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis from the 1920s until 1950. In order to appease expectant parents, she provided more than 5,000 orphans, concealing the reality that many of them were actually stolen sons and daughters of low-income families, desperate single moms, and mothers who had been informed in maternity facilities that their babies had passed away.
With the release of Lisa Wingate's book Before We Were Yours, more people became aware of Tann's successful child trafficking business. Adoptees who had no prior knowledge of their pasts were enlightened about the shocking truths of their family histories. Many resolute Tann survivors embarked on a mission to discover their biological families and trace their roots, spurred on by their interactions with Wingate and the esteemed journalist Judy Christie, who chronicled the experiences of fifteen adoptees in her book.
Before and After tells heartbreaking—and occasionally startling—stories of adoptees' initial family separations. Many have happily reunited with siblings in their latter years, having been raised as only children much of their lives. Before and After, by Wingate and Christie, tells the story of families from very different social origins reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins, and of first meets that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed. Long-silent victims of the fatally corrupt system come to Memphis with Wingate and Christie to recover their stories at a Tennessee Children's Home Society reunion, with extraordinary results, in a moving climax of art meeting life.