Lisa Wingate will be joining us Friday, June 9th from 5 pm to 7 pm at Silver Coast Winery, and she will read and sign copies of her newest book Before We Were Yours.
Admission is $7.50 and includes a glass of wine. Silver Coast Winery is located at 6680 Barbeque Rd NW, Ocean Isle Beach, NC 28469. (Map below)
About Before We Were Yours:
This masterful, harrowing and ultimately redemptive novel uncovers and brilliantly fictionalizes a devastating slice of little-known American history… and tells a story of a family torn apart by a shocking betrayal.
Memphis, Tennessee, 1936. Docked aboard the family’s shantyboat, the Arcadia, the five Foss children find their lives changed forever when their parents leave them alone one stormy night. Rill Foss, just twelve years old, must shepherd her four younger siblings as they are wrenched from their boat on the Mississippi and thrown into the care of The Tennessee Children’s Home Society, a notorious system of orphanages ultimately deemed responsible for the kidnapping and selling thousands of children in illegal adoptions.
South Carolina, Present Day. Born into a world of wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all. A loving daughter to her father, a U.S. Senator, with her own ambitious career as an assistant D.A. and a handsome fiancé waiting for her in Baltimore, she has lived an admittedly charmed life. But when Avery returns to Aiken to help her father weather a health crisis and a political attack, a chance encounter with May Crandall, an elderly woman she’s never met before, leaves Avery deeply shaken. Avery’s decision to learn more about May’s life will take her on a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, illuminating what’s at the very center of Avery’s story and buried deep within her own heart.
Based on first hand accounts of the true stories behind the Tennessee Children’s Home Society and the infamously cruel Georgia Tann, who ran the orphanage largely unchecked thanks to friends with deep pockets and far-reaching political power, Wingate has created an incredibly riveting, heart-wrenching read.
About Lisa Wingate:
Lisa Wingate is a former journalist, inspirational speaker, and bestselling author of more than twenty novels. Her work has won or been nominated for many awards, including the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize, the Oklahoma Book Award, the Utah Library Award, The Carol Award, the Christy Award, and the RT Booklovers Reviewer’s Choice Award.
The group Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa along with six others as recipients of the National Civics Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life. Booklist summed up her work by saying, “Lisa Wingate is, quite simply, a master storyteller.”
Pelican Bookstore 