Before and After (before and After, #1)

From the 1920s through 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market adoption operation through the Tennessee Children's Home Society (TCHS), a Memphis-based orphanage that placed approximately 5,000 children, many of whom were not actually orphans, into adoptive homes across the country. Tann preyed on desperate single mothers, poverty-stricken families, and vulnerable women in maternity wards, sometimes telling mothers their newborns had died. She falsified children's records, fabricated their backgrounds to match buyers' preferences, and charged fees far exceeding the standard seven-dollar Tennessee adoption rate. Protected by Memphis mayor E. H. "Boss" Crump and a paid network of complicit doctors, social workers, and judges, Tann operated without scrutiny for over two decades. An estimated 500 children died in her unregulated holding facilities. Tann died on September 15, 1950, at age 59, never having admitted to her crimes. The Tennessee State Legislature then sealed the records of thousands of TCHS children, leaving adoptees to spend decades searching for their origins.

The book documents the real-life stories of TCHS survivors whose experiences surfaced after Lisa Wingate's 2017 novel Before We Were Yours fictionalized the Tann scandal. As the novel gained international popularity, adoptees and their family members contacted Wingate, sharing personal histories of separation and loss. Among the first was Connie Wilson, a California retiree and one of the last babies placed by TCHS. Born July 10, 1950, Connie was taken from her mother at one week old and adopted by a troubled Memphis couple. She spent decades piecing together her origins before discovering she had a brother, Graham, whom she met at New York City's Rainbow Room. After a book-club member suggested organizing a reunion, Connie proposed the idea to Wingate, who agreed. Kim Bearden, executive director of Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, where 19 children who died under Tann's care are buried, invited Wingate to speak in June 2018, and that event became the anchor for a reunion weekend. Wingate recruited her longtime friend, veteran journalist Judy Christie, to interview adoptees and preserve their stories.

The book presents these stories in adoptees' own voices. Sandra Morris's mother, Helen, was born Josephine in 1943 to Anna West, an unwed 19-year-old in Johnson City, Tennessee, who worked two jobs to keep her daughter. TCHS workers tracked the baby, praised her looks in internal reports, and arranged for her removal after Anna fell behind on rent. Helen was adopted by a wealthy couple and spent her life angry that her birth parents let her go, dying at 65 without meeting them. Sandra continues the search in her mother's honor.

Diane Page, born in Memphis in 1944, deduced she was adopted at 15 through a high school biology class when she realized she did not share genetic traits with her parents. Her birth mother, Nora Ruth Miller, a pastor's daughter who became pregnant while working at a wartime ammunition plant, had searched for Diane before dying. When Diane contacted relatives, her great-aunt responded: "We've been expecting this call for years."

One of the book's most complex stories traces four siblings, children of a woman named Elsie Clara who gave away four babies over a decade. The first, Glenn, was handed to strangers in a West Tennessee pharmacy around 1934. Three more went to TCHS and were dispersed across the country. Bess, the youngest, was sent to Sarah and Carl Kipling in New York City after Tann lied about the birth mother's identity. She grew up materially privileged but lonely, pretending two dolls were her siblings. Bess methodically searched for family, locating brother Jim in Arizona and sister Susan in Nashville. The final connection came through Bess's 18-year-old grandson, Josh, whose Ancestry.com DNA kit matched Glenn's daughter Victoria. Glenn, who had discovered the word "Adopted" in a family Bible at 16, wept when he finally spoke with Bess by phone.

Patricia Forster's story reveals the extent of Tann's fabrications. Born on Christmas Day 1942 to a Christian mother in Tennessee, baby Carol was sold to a childless Jewish couple in Buffalo, New York, with an elaborate false backstory involving a Jewish medical student father and a mother who died in childbirth. Patricia grew up thoroughly Jewish, her grandchildren calling her Bubbe, the Yiddish word for "grandmother." Decades later, a persistent friend tracked down Patricia's biological cousin, who gasped: "Lordy, Lordy, you're baby Carol." Patricia learned she had sisters who endured severe neglect while she grew up pampered. She never met her birth mother, Anita, who murmured in her final years, "Where's that baby? What happened to that baby?"

Michael Johnston, born in February 1948, was the ninth child of Hattie Esme Arrow, who told her other eight children she was having a tumor removed before secretly giving birth at a clinic in Paris, Tennessee. The baby was taken to TCHS the next day. Michael's wife, Grace, spent years searching for his birth family after he developed vascular health issues, eventually reaching a cousin through directory assistance in Michigan. Michael reunited with siblings and discovered uncanny parallels: He and brother Sammy dressed alike, named their younger sons after themselves, and both started smoking at 20 and quit at 63.

Janie Brand, one of the few adoptees with memories of Tann's Receiving Home, the TCHS nursery on Poplar Avenue in Memphis, was three and a half when her mother left her and two brothers on courthouse steps in Tiptonville, Tennessee. At the orphanage, Janie was separated from her brothers, who were flown to Hollywood. Her grandfather drove to Memphis to reclaim them but was told they were gone, while Janie was still upstairs. Adopted by a politically connected couple, Janie lost both adoptive parents by age 12. In midlife, she located brother Henry and spent 20 years rebuilding their bond, including sitting together on the same courthouse steps where they had been abandoned.

Stanley Henderson came to the reunion carrying his brother's name on a piece of paper in his wallet. In 1939, his mother, Josie Henderson, gave birth at a Memphis hospital; the next morning, officials said the baby died overnight. The family never believed the story, suspecting the infant was stolen, a method Tann regularly used. On her deathbed, Josie revealed she had named the baby after leaving the hospital, meaning Stanley had been searching under the wrong name for years.

Four sisters, Vivian, Paula, Elinor, and Kate, brought their mother Nelda Sue's ashes to the reunion. As a six-year-old, Nelda had been lured into Tann's limousine with her siblings while their mother was hospitalized after a domestic assault. The children were separated and sent to different states. Nelda's life was marked by instability and trauma she passed to her own children. On their first evening in Memphis, the sisters went to the Mississippi River and released Nelda's ashes. Elinor, who had clashed most with their mother, carried the urn to the water's edge and asked for forgiveness.

The reunion reached its emotional peak at Elmwood Cemetery, where adoptees gathered around a marble monument to the 19 children who died in TCHS care. White roses were placed on the marker. Lillian Roberts, rescued as a dying 13-day-old from a corner crib at the orphanage by adoptive parents who chose her over a healthy child, told the crowd, "I could be right there under that tree." James Sanders, a premature baby once delivered to Los Angeles in the middle of the night, met birth-family cousins in Mississippi after the weekend. Janie reflected that the gathering "closed up sections in me where there had been holes." The authors close with the hope that these stories will help separated siblings find one another, change adoption laws, and ensure nothing like TCHS happens again.