Great Beginnings Book Club discussion

Hello all. I'll keep this informal.

This is the first time using the Goodreads group in order to host a discussion. I think that's pretty cool, and I hope that it is the first among many. I'm posting it at the very end of our reading Before We Were Yours, so the timing is a little off (sorry). It's possible that no one will have the time or inclination to return to the book after our physical discussion at Moffat, but that's okay. This book is, at least in part, about snuffed out potential and the shifting and uncertain course of peoples' lives. "Would I change the course of our lives if I could?" (Chapter 26). Well, as far as first questions go, that one probably doesn't have any definite answer (sorry again). All I can say is welcome to the Great Beginnings Book Club on Goodreads. I'm glad that I get to share all these books with everyone!

All right. If anyone wants to talk a little bit more about Before We Were Yours, might I suggest these questions to spark some ideas?

1. This is a historical novel. Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children's Home Society really did steal hundreds or thousands of children in order to profit from placing them in new homes. Does this change your response to the novel? Are you interested in learning more about adoptions and orphans before and during the Great Depression? How do the events dramatized in the novel compare to instances of human trafficking today?

2. "Who chooses the schedules we keep? We do, I guess. Although, so often it seems as if there isn't any choice. If we aren't constantly slapping new paint on all the ramparts, the wind and the weather will sneak in and erode the accomplishments of a dozen previous generations of the family. The good life demands a lot of maintenance" (Chapter 11).

Are the lives that Avery and Grandma Judy - as well as the lives of Rill and Fern once they are adopted by the Seviers - better than the life of the Foss family on the riverboat Arcadia? Is some amount of deception or tragedy worth improvement in a person's familial and material circumstances? Rill convinces Arney to leave her family and run away to try to rejoin Rill's birth family near the end of the novel. Is this different than Georgia Tann stealing children from one family in order to place them in a "better" one? Is the true crime of the Tennessee Children's Home Society the abuse that it fosters or the families that it destroyed?

3. Multiple people in the novel find themselves in situation where they feel obligated (for various reasons) to live double lives. The Foss children obviously are forced to answer to new names and play-act for potential adoptive parents. Grandma Judy struggles with dementia, cycling between knowing her family members and failing to recognize them. Avery feels compelled to structure her career and upcoming marriage according the social expectations of her family rather than her own desires. Does this theme influence how Lisa Wingate structured her novel? Do you think that this sort of ambivalence and struggle is common to all people? What are some other circumstances that might produce a sense of a double life?

4. This one's decidedly tongue-in-cheek. Avery is preparing to run for political office in case her father - Senator Stafford - is unable to run again due to poor health. As a member of what political party do you think Avery would run in that hypothetical election?

Answer any, all, or bring up your own questions.