She Treads Softly: Once You Were Mine

Sunday, January 19, 2025

Once You Were Mine

Once You Were Mine by Elizabeth Langston
2/11/25; 363 pages
Lake Union Publishing

Once You Were Mine by Elizabeth Langston is a highly recommended family drama following characters in dual time periods while exploring DNA testing and changing societal attitudes.

In 1968 seventeen-year-old Molly Mitchell is pregnant and her parents send her away to an abusive "maternity home." She is mistreated, shamed and condemned at the facility with the goal of coercing her into signing adoption papers. Her roommate there, Gwen, becomes a lifelong friend. After she leaves the home she works hard to make a life for herself.

In the present day Allison Garrett takes a DNA test and makes some startling discoveries. Because her mother was adopted, her background was a mystery. The results of the test show that Allison is closely related to her best friend, Bree. They are cousins. This sets into motion a search for answers and the truth in both families.

This is an even paced family drama that alternates between the two different time periods. It demonstrates the difference between a time when family secrets could be hidden and the current time when almost everything can be discovered and exposed. Although the genealogical research and ancestry question is the main story line, there are also several other subplots that are followed.

The characters in both timelines are fully realized and portrayed as complicated realistic individuals. Molly's story is basically the trauma she experienced at seventeen and then the life she made for herself afterward. The story of Allison and Bree follow complications in their daily lives along with the ancestry question, which shakes up both families and leads to tangled emotions.

The novel starts out strong but does lose some energy in the middle. There were some ancillary subplots that could have been eliminated to tighten up the novel. Additionally, the maternity home was certainly a real thing years ago and adds a highly emotional hook to the plot, but that was not a universal experience of all pregnant teens. Honestly, many families can look into their history and find complications and secrets.

Thanks to Lake Union Publishing for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.