I haven’t written much since Covid interrupted our family dynamics, but I recently found an exceptionally well-written and poignant book and have to share it. This one is excellent–historical fiction set against the infamous Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage. While the orphanage often did provide loving homes for needy kids, it’s also well established that they stole children from loving parents and sold them to wealthy clients from the 20s until, unbelievably, 1950. Because of ties to the mob and with so many powerful clients with secrets to hide, they were seemingly untouchable. Records weren’t unsealed until 1995. Using alternating perspectives of a grandmother trying to hide her history and a granddaughter seeking to uncover it, Lisa Wingate tells an immensely compelling story of five “river gypsy” children stolen from their home on a Mississippi river boat in 1939 and follows their story into the modern era. Two thumbs way up. Age 14+