A beautiful cover and an interesting title.
This novel has two alternating storylines.
Maryland in 1939 and South Carolina, present day.
In 1939, there was a poor but loving family living on a riverboat: parents Queenie and Briny, children Rill (12), Camellia (10), Lark (6), Fern (4), Gabion (2). The mother was taken to the hospital when the delivery of her twins, (with an untrained midwife) went seriously wrong. While the parents were gone, the children were picked up by an adoption agency, never to be returned to the parents.
The other storyline is the granddaughter of one of the children (a lawyer), trying to piece together the story of her ancestors.
This novel is extremely sad and the saddest part is that the story is based on facts. Between 1920 and 1950, the Tennessee Children's Home Society took children from poor families and sold them to celebrities and politicians. During the process, they allowed or intentionally caused the death of an estimated 500 children. Perhaps some of the children really were orphans and were able to be adopted by a good family but the horrendous stories, like this one, are common. Birth records were altered so that they could never be found by their original family.
Georgia Tann was the manager of this organization and she had a lot of influence, which allowed her to steal babies from hospitals, prisons, etc. When a new mayor was elected, he caught wind of the mistreatment of children and did an investigation. Georgia Tann died of cancer before the findings were made public.
Many readers loved this book, but it was too emotionally packed for me. It is much harder to read this type of story when you know it is based on fact.
The second storyline seemed contrived and not so interesting, but added another dimension to the novel.
In 1939, there was a poor but loving family living on a riverboat: parents Queenie and Briny, children Rill (12), Camellia (10), Lark (6), Fern (4), Gabion (2). The mother was taken to the hospital when the delivery of her twins, (with an untrained midwife) went seriously wrong. While the parents were gone, the children were picked up by an adoption agency, never to be returned to the parents.
The other storyline is the granddaughter of one of the children (a lawyer), trying to piece together the story of her ancestors.
This novel is extremely sad and the saddest part is that the story is based on facts. Between 1920 and 1950, the Tennessee Children's Home Society took children from poor families and sold them to celebrities and politicians. During the process, they allowed or intentionally caused the death of an estimated 500 children. Perhaps some of the children really were orphans and were able to be adopted by a good family but the horrendous stories, like this one, are common. Birth records were altered so that they could never be found by their original family.
Many readers loved this book, but it was too emotionally packed for me. It is much harder to read this type of story when you know it is based on fact.
The second storyline seemed contrived and not so interesting, but added another dimension to the novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment