Before We Were Yours

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat until their father rushes their mother to the hospital one stormy night and strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar, the Foss children are thrown into the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage and assured they will soon be returned to their parents, but they quickly face a darker reality under the facility’s cruel director as Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Avery Stafford, born into wealth and a successful federal prosecutor with a fiancé and wedding planned, returns home to help her father during a health crisis. A chance encounter prompts uncomfortable questions and sends her on a search through her family’s long-hidden history that ties to the real-life scandal surrounding Georgia Tann and stolen children.