Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate

 Rill Foss and her four siblings live with loving parents on a houseboat on the Mississippi in the 1930's.  On the night her mother goes into labor with twins, a police officer catches Rill and her sisters and brother and take them to the Tennessee Children's Home Society.  They think they are just staying there until their mom gets back from the hospital, but there is something much more sinister going on. 

Two generations later, Avery Stafford is being groomed to replace her father, whose health is failing, as a state representative. She meets a woman during a nursing home photo op that looks very much like her grandmother, and has a picture of her grandmother as a young woman.  As Avery starts to investigate the uncanny coincidence, she starts to unearth secrets about her family's past that some may wish to keep buried. 

This book was on the top of the e-book charts a few years ago. It is a well written and intriguing historical fiction based on an actual scandal.  Hundreds of children in the 1930's-1950's were stolen from their poor families and groomed and then sold to wealthy families.  Those who were unsalable were often just killed.  Wingate resists the temptation of painting the wealthy families as evil or wicked because they participated in human trafficking.  Often the adoptive families were just as much victims of the Society's deceit as the children were. Nothing is black and white, and it is the complicated nuance that makes the book fascinating and compelling. Part mystery, part tragedy and part romance, there is good reason it was such a hit (2017, 342 p.)