The Life She Was Given: A Moving and Emotional Saga of Family and Resilient Women

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 attic bedroom. Lilly isn’t allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She’s ...