Ellen Marie Wiseman

"In 1930s Virginia, Lena Conti, a young immigrant mother separated from her family at Ellis Island, builds a new life in the Blue Ridge Mountains but must resist a brutal eugenics campaign that targets her community and threatens to take her daughter"-- Provided by publisher.

Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in New York Times bestselling author Ellen Marie Wiseman's vivid, daring, emotional novel about the devastating power of family secrets—beginning in the poignant, lurid world of a Depression-era traveling circus and coming full circle in the transformative 1950s.

On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her

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"Six years after her twin sister's death, 16-year-old Sage discovers a shocking secret, her sister didn't die, she was committed to Willowbrook State School until she recently went missing, and, determined to find her, Sage walks through its doors, which changes her life in ways she never could have imagined"-- Provided by publisher

This eye-opening novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Collector delivers "a spot-on portrayal of a dark time in American history" (Historical Novel Society, Editor's Choice).

Ellen Marie Wiseman draws readers into the Pennsylvania mining operations of the early 20th century—where children had no choice but to work in deadly conditions . . . or face starvation.
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Instant New York Times Bestseller!
For fans of The Girls with No Names, The Silent Patient, and Girl, Interrupted, the New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Collector blends fact, fiction, and the urban legend of Cropsey in 1970s New York, as mistaken identities lead to a young woman's imprisonment at Willowbrook State School, the real state-run institution that Geraldo Rivera would later expose

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"On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom. Lilly isn't allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She's never even ventured beyond her narrow room. Momma insists it's for Lilly's own protection, that people would be afraid if they saw her. But on this unforgettable night, Lilly is taken outside for the first time--and sold to the circus sideshow. More than two decades...

In the fall of 1938, as Germany rapidly changes under Hitler's regime, 17-year-old Christine Bolz, a domestic forbidden to return to the wealthy Jewish family she works for - and to her employer's son Isaac, confronts the Gestapo's wrath and the horrors of Dachau to survive and to be with the man she loves.