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Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children...

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Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society Kindle Edition

by Judy Christie (Author), Lisa Wingate (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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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 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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Editorial Reviews

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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, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan’s Tale and The Lost Girls of Paris

“Lisa Wingate’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel Before We Were Yours brought worldwide attention to a shocking scandal of lost and stolen children. What she couldn’t know was that her novel would also become the catalyst for survivors, now in old age, to share their stories. Before and After, while at times a very sad and shocking read, is ultimately a collection of astonishing real-life stories of strength, hope, and resilience in the face of the cruelest circumstances. If you read Before We Were Yours, you will devour Before and After.”
—Amy Hill Hearth, New York Times bestselling author of Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years

“Fans who couldn’t get enough of Before We Were Yours will devour this book in a single sitting. In Before and After, Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate gracefully chronicle the experiences of survivors forever affected by a corrupt Tennessee orphanage, leading many to a life-altering reunion in search of healing. . . . Not only a heart-wrenching and inspiring read but also a testament to the incredible power of storytelling.”
—Kristina McMorris, author of Sold on a Monday and The Edge of Lost

“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.”
—Cea Sunrise Person, author of North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both

“An uplifting exploration of what family truly means. Most of the stories are touching tales of discovering one’s true history and reuniting with biological relatives. This title is an excellent companion to Wingate’s novel and will surely be a hit on the book club circuit.”
—Booklist

“Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate have given readers a precious gift in this book, in these haunting stories filled with both heartache and hope. What you hold in your hands is a testament to the power of family, faith, and the love that binds our human hearts. You will race through Before and After, but you will keep thinking about it long after the final page.”
—Allison Pataki, author of Beauty in the Broken Places

About the Author

Judy Christie is an award-winning journalist and the author of eighteen books of both fiction and nonfiction. A former editor at daily newspapers in Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, and Indiana, she holds a master’s degree in literature from Louisiana State University in Shreveport. She and her husband live in rural Colorado.

Lisa Wingate is a former journalist, an inspirational speaker, and the author of numerous novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Before We Were Yours, which has sold more than 2.2 million copies. The co-author, with Judy Christie, of the nonfiction book, Before and After, Wingate is a two-time ACFW Carol Award winner, a Christy Award nominee, an Oklahoma Book Award finalist, and a Southern Book Prize winner. She lives with her husband in North Texas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Real-Life Adoptees

“Have you considered a reunion?”

Connie Wilson is relaxing in her condo in Southern California with her beloved Labradoodle, Jackson, when the email arrives.

“Oh my gosh, Connie!” a book-club friend from Arizona writes. “Have you read Before We Were Yours?”

It’s June 2017, and the novel by Lisa Wingate is brand-new. Connie has not heard of it. But faster than her pup can nudge her to play tug-of-war, she downloads a digital copy. In only forty-eight hours, she devours it, tamping down emotions as she reads. The fictionalized story about children adopted through the Tennessee Children’s Home Society is oh so familiar to her.

Connie’s life is historic in a way she would rather have avoided: she is one of the last babies placed by the scandal-ridden orphanage. In her late sixties when she, Lisa, and I meet, Connie is one of the youngest members of a unique and uncomfortable club—living adoptees connected to TCHS. People whose lives were irrevocably altered at the hands of Georgia Tann. For Connie and thousands like her, events that took place decades ago are difficult to place in the past. The effects remain ever present.

On September 11, 1950, just two months after Connie’s birth, a criminal investigation into Tann’s adoption practices was announced. Orphanage funds were cut, and the babies on hand were left in limbo. Connie’s adoption was held up, and her guardianship was transferred from TCHS to the Tennessee Department of Public Welfare. That was when she joined the tail end of a decades-long line of sad statistics.

Under the autocratic control of Georgia Tann, and thanks to her effective grip on look-the-other-way political and civic leaders, TCHS managed to operate in Memphis from 1924 to 1950 without scrutiny or interference. Approximately five thousand children, many of whom were not actually orphaned, passed through the agency’s doors. An unknown number, estimated at five hundred, perished in unregulated, often squalid, holding facilities. Others were delivered into homes that faced little to no scrutiny, to parents who, for a host of reasons, could not adopt conventionally.

These real-life stories left their mark on ordinary people, now in the final season of their lives, as they pass along their experiences with TCHS and Tann’s deeds to future generations through their personal accounts of what happened . . . and through their DNA.

A blend of what was happening in the world, from the Great Depression to World War II and the Holocaust, and including the stigma of unwed motherhood, led to the growth of Tann’s network for obtaining and placing children. Poverty-stricken mothers gave up babies out of desperation; unmarried young women were not allowed to keep their newborns because of the taint of illegitimacy; and poor parents, hard at work, often unable to afford babysitters, found their children lured from front yards and into Tann’s chauffeur-driven black limousine as it glided around Tennessee and Arkansas. With her paid network of doctors, social workers, and even boardinghouse owners, Tann snatched babies up as soon as they became available.

Some frantic birth parents—along with the occasional physician—attempted to challenge Tann, a stern-looking woman with short hair and glasses. Tann, however, had political clout and immense wealth, built on the backs of children sold for profit, some of it from checks made out to her personally. With the help of her connections via Memphis mayor E. H. “Boss” Crump, a political kingpin with powerful ties throughout the state, and others in positions of authority, she deflected inquiries with the ease of swatting a mosquito on a Tennessee summer afternoon.

But now, in 1950, the year of Connie’s birth, the end of Tann’s reign of terror nears. Tennessee politics are changing. Crump is out. The new Tennessee governor, Gordon Browning, appoints attorney Robert Taylor to ferret out the grisly truth of TCHS’s Memphis operations. He has already discovered damning evidence. Only a small network of co-conspirators know the truth. With the investigation under way, they flee into the crevasses of Memphis and disappear like rats running into the city’s sewers. Although some community leaders—powerful, wealthy, political—have undoubtedly been complicit, all the blame is conveniently assigned to Tann.

She holes up in her home, reportedly in the last stages of uterine cancer—too ill, it is said, to respond to the charges or face the public. Governor Browning releases Taylor’s shocking initial report, which details Tann’s years of nefarious dealings in the adoption market. She has, the governor reveals, made herself rich and completed an unknown number of horrendous deals involving flesh-and-blood products.

Within days, on September 15, 1950, it is announced that she has died. Tann, fifty-nine, never married, leaves her estate to her mother, an adopted daughter, and an adopted sister. The orphanage is not mentioned. The Tennessee State Legislature quickly and quietly seals the paperwork of thousands of TCHS children, which will leave adoptees desperately searching for decades to uncover the truth about their heritage. The investigation concludes that Tann profited from the operation of TCHS in Memphis in excess of five hundred thousand dollars in the last ten years of her life—taking in today’s equivalent of between five and ten million dollars.

During that period, the investigation found, she placed more than a thousand children for adoption outside the state of Tennessee, principally in New York and California, the exact number not known.

If Connie, the baby girl born just two months before Tann’s death, and these thousands of other children were characters in a novel, justice as well as blame might have landed squarely on Tann’s head. Police would swoop into her Memphis Receiving Home, rescue her remaining charges, shackle Tann, and whisk her off to jail. She would endure a trial and be forced to stand eye to eye with children she procured in the 1920s or 1930s or 1940s, or with parents whose babies were snatched, or with people in California and New York who paid extra for children because they sensed that if they didn’t, their in-process adoptions might suddenly go wrong.

But real life does not happen that way.

Tann dies, never having admitted to her crimes and, supposedly, never having known that she has finally been exposed, and certainly not having paid back the money that supported her lavish lifestyle. She is never made to face families she misused, those good and kind people who will spend a lifetime unraveling the knots she tied, a lifetime trying to heal the hearts she broke.

But finally, all these years later, her name is ruined, her power gone. Now the triumph belongs to quiet conquerors, who are ready to tell their stories.

In a piece of history with so many villains, they are the heroes.

Still in the throes of reading Before We Were Yours, Connie is intrigued when her book-club friend surfaces again with an invitation: “Would you mind talking about you and the book?”

A seasoned traveler after years in the business world, Connie happily makes plans to hop a plane to Arizona a couple of months later. Spurred on by this interest in her past, she emails the author of the novel, a woman she has never met.

09/12/17 at 4:06 p.m.

Dear Lisa Wingate,

Reading your new book Before We Were Yours inspired me to go back through all the records, articles, and information I have gathered about my adoption . . .

I was reunited with my natural brother after 40 years of not knowing I even had one (same for him). It is a wonderful story if you are interested. I also think you would find interesting all the letters from Georgia Tann and the research for the 40 years that followed.

I’d also love to know how the other victims are today. What emotional impact this had on them.

Please let me know if you’d like me to come speak with you, bring any records, or just have a phone call.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Connie

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07Q4LSNVB
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books (October 22, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 22, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 19839 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 297 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1529406366

Best Sellers Rank: #114,132 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #19 in Adoption (Kindle Store)
- #53 in Biographies & Memoirs of Abductions, Kidnappings & Missing Persons
- #70 in Adoption (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 4,101 ratings

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Lisa Wingate
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Lisa Wingate's new novel, Shelterwood, is upcoming in June 4th, 2024. Her novel, Before We Were Yours, was a #1 New York Times bestseller, remained on the list for over two years, and has sold more than three million copies. Her books have been translated into over forty languages and have appeared on bestseller lists worldwide. Before We Were Yours, her blockbuster hit, was Publishers Weekly’s third longest running bestseller of 2017, and was voted by readers as the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award winner for historical fiction. She lives in Texas and Colorado with her family and her cuddly little teddy bear of a dog, Huckleberry. Find her at her website or on Facebook and Instagram.
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Judy Christie
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Author Judy Christie loves to read, write and talk about books.
An award-winning journalist, Judy is the co-author of "Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society," a project that combines her love of stories, her Southern heritage, and her journalism background. She wrote the book with longtime friend Lisa Wingate, author of the bestseller "Before We Were Yours," a fictional account of the Tennessee Children's Home Society scandal.
Judy's appreciation for interviewing began in elementary school, where she was editor of The Barret Banner, and continued in her work as a newspaper reporter and editor. Her interviews with the heroes of the Tennessee Children's Home Society tragedy tell stories of love and loss through the voices of adoptees, now in their seventies and eighties, and their families—and the unexpected blessing of a gathering of adoptees.
Judy also has written a series of nonfiction self-help books and three series of Southern novels, including the Green, Louisiana, and Wreath Willis series.
She writes daily and has kept a diary since she was eleven--and still has all of them. She is also an avid letter writer and loves to create mail art.
Judy writes a #booklover column at www.shreveporttimes.com and invites you to visit her online. You can find her on Facebook @JudyChristieAuthor and Twitter @judypchristie.
For contests, book announcements, and chitchat about books, sign up for her free e-newsletter at www.judychristie.com.
Judy and her husband, a Tennessee native, live in rural Colorado where they share their place with the occasional bear and the ravens they are trying to befriend.
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Amy True Flota

incredible book!!

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2024

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"Before We Were Yours" by Lisa Wingate is indeed a captivating novel that intertwines historical events with compelling characters. The story sheds light on a dark chapter in American history and the impact it had on families. Wingate's writing style keeps readers engaged from the start, making it difficult to put the book down. Overall, it's a poignant and thought-provoking read that stays with you long after you've finished it.

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Joyce Ma

Preying on helpless children

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2024

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I recently read Before We Were Yours and it touched my life in many ways as an adoptive mother and also one who spent a lot of time in Tennessee in my early years. Yesterday, I saw this book Before and After mentioned. Love my Kindle and bought it. Just finished reading, as tears have dampened my shirt, and feel so close to the real lives here. These two authors have opened a floodgate to healing for so many. Such good reads.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

an inspiring read

Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2023

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I read this immediately after re-reading “Before We We’re Yours” for a book club. I really liked learning about the real-life stories. While the content was difficult at times it was treated with great respect and always kept the spirit of hope and perseverance at the forefront.

2 people found this helpful

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Sue Gerber

Very enthralling.

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2024

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Was a great read and really unique & interesting.

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2024

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Such a tragic situation, and such uplifting reunions. Wonderful real-life follow-up to Before We Were Yours. Thank you, Lisa Wingate, for writing Before We Were Yours, and thank you, Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate, for writing Before and After.

One person found this helpful

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L. Beyer

Sort of interesting but not groundbreaking

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2021

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Not for sophisticated readers! I'm not sure if this is a story about an event planned for adopted children or a story about a woman who for better or worse took children from some pretty poverty-stricken and dysfunctional families and put them into better homes. It's very disjointed and jumps from one adoptee to another and gets into details that aren't that interesting or relevant to the fact that they were adopted. I'm sure the authors or author was thrilled by the feedback to her first book, but maybe she should have waited a few years and given some thought about how to pull the stories together in a more literary and meaningful fashion. You can't possibly keep up with the people involved, including half brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents etc., so don't even try and it doesn't really matter. The upshot is that a woman in Tennessee made a lot of money through shady adoption practices, possibly let some infants die in her care which is horrifying, and so much like what's happening today (2021) had politicians in her pocket and got rich. There's a narrative that adopted children are always missing something and I'm not sure that's true for everyone. Nor is the longing to find family. I'm adopted and my family found me and that's great, but I was never curious or interested to find them. At times, the sheer size of my birth family overwhelms me, and I thank God that I was taken away and placed for adoption. Overall not a bad book, but certainly not a great book. Sort of cheesy at times.

3 people found this helpful

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Cyn Fingers

Families Reunited: Before and After and the Real-Life Impact of a Best-Selling Historical Novel

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2020

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I read Lisa Wingate's best-selling novel Before We Were Yours months ago. It is about a fictitious family living in a poor area in the deep South,that is torn apart by a scandalous adoption agency based in Tennessee that absconds with the youngsters and then separates them and places them up for adoption without the knowledge and permission of the birth parents. It is also about how members of this family sought to find one another again. I had never before read or heard anything about this agency that preyed upon poor mothers and took their babies and young children and adopted them out to couples who were oftentimes required to pay hefty fees for these children. Oftentimes the adoptive parents, who had no inkling that something like this had been happening, had been unable to adopt elsewhere for numerous reasons, sometimes because they had been deemed too old. This agency functioned in the mid-20th century, meaning that any surviving adoptees as of now are in their twilight years, and few if any of their birth parents are still living. Before and After is a non-fiction book co-written by the novelist and a very close friend that documents how Lisa Wingate's promotional book tours precipitated a movement that has assisted survivors in locating information about their birth mothers and siblings, and in some amazing cases, has even helped them find one another and meet families they did not know they had. I heartily recommend you read both books....preferably the novel before reading Before and After. Well written, both books are definitely worth one's time.

8 people found this helpful

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Connie R.

Very moving!

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2021

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This book is a non-fiction sequel to Lisa Wingate's book, Before We were Yours.
I did not read that book, I read Liz Tolsma's book The Pink Bonnet, which first introduced me to the horrible history of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. I was going to buy Wingate's fiction book but when I saw this one I opted for the non-fiction.
This book details what happened after Before We Were Yours was published, and the incredible feedback that the author received as she did tours and talks about the book. There was an incredible cry for followup from the people who personally experienced the work of Georgia Tann. Lisa and her friend Judy took on an awesome task, with much help from others, of a reunion of sorts and a written collection of the stories that the adoptees and their families had to tell.
It's humbling that people who sometimes suffered terribly have such grace and forgiveness. It's amazing to read about how stories were put together from the most meager crumbs of information. The stories are incredible. The knowledge that a place like this was allowed to operate and even thrived is sickening. But good has come, including changes in access across many states for adoptees seeking information.
Read it, or at least make yourself aware of the history of this place. People need to know that it happened so that it doesn't happen again.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

M. D.

does not read like a novel but sooo very interesting and sad

Reviewed in Canada on February 25, 2021

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does not read like a novel but rather chapter by chapter recounts of real life stories of survivors. Sooo very interesting yet sooooo sad .

One person found this helpful

Melinda K Stevens

A loaded review

Reviewed in Germany on March 19, 2021

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Filled with testimonies of families seeking connections to lost loved ones. Sad but uplifting when considering where these adopted children landed and their silent struggle taken up by family members or themselves to find the truth and connect with their, mother, father, or siblings.

Val M

A very emotional read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2020

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Having read Before We Were Yours, it seemed common sense to read Before and After and I am very glad I did. Incredible to think something like this was allowed to happen and I pray God that it is never repeated. We are supposed to be much more enlightened now but atrocities still happen which is exceedingly worrying.

2 people found this helpful

Michelle

Gripping

Reviewed in Australia on July 31, 2020

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Great account of first hand accounts of the reality of the Georgia Tann debacle.

TeeCee

Reunion-Report with some personal stories

Reviewed in Germany on December 13, 2022

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Well. I was hoping for some real stories of what was life really like inside the children‘s home of Georgia Tann. What I got is a report of a reunion of adoptees, a lot of narrating how that was organized (ot not) by two authors. There are some stories of adoptees, but as far as I read, apart from feeling that „something‘s not right“ and being lonely, almost all of them had a pretty good life in their adoptive families. Good on them. But not what I was interested in (which was the real situation in birth families and the orphanage). I stopped at appeox. 60% because it was too boring.

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