Before We Were Yours Heads to Netflix, Scores Emmy Nod

Lisa Wingate's multi-million-copy bestseller Before We Were Yours has made the leap from page to screen — and earned immediate awards attention in the process. According to a recent feature by Woman's World↗ covering the book-to-screen adaptations behind this year's Emmy nominations, the novel was adapted into a Netflix film in 2026 and has received a nomination for Outstanding Movie at the Primetime Emmy Awards. The piece notes that while minor location changes were made in the adaptation, the plot remained largely intact from Wingate's source novel — a level of fidelity that has become increasingly rare in an era when IP-driven productions often bear only passing resemblance to their literary origins.

For readers coming to the story via the Netflix film, Before We Were Yours: A Novel by Lisa Wingate dramatizes one of American history's most disturbing adoption scandals — the systematic kidnapping and sale of impoverished children by the Tennessee Children's Home Society, operated by Georgia Tann. Wingate tells the story across two alternating timelines, weaving the historical horror of the 1930s into a contemporary narrative thread. The novel became a phenomenon in its own right, reaching the top of the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists, and going on to win the Southern Book Prize. Wingate, as her publisher notes↗, is also a Goodreads Choice Award winner and Oklahoma Book Award finalist — a track record that speaks to the novel's broad, sustained readership across genres and demographics.

Notably, this is not the first time Wingate's source material has inspired screen adaptation. As Book Analysis documents↗, a 1993 television film covering the Georgia Tann story — starring Mary Tyler Moore and Lea Thompson — won a Primetime Emmy Award and earned a CableACE nomination. That earlier screen treatment predated Wingate's novel, but the parallel is striking: the same historical scandal has now produced two Emmy-recognized adaptations across three decades. It underscores both the enduring power of the story and the degree to which Wingate's retelling introduced it to an entirely new generation of readers.

The Woman's World piece frames the Emmy nominations broadly, pointing to what it describes as a book-to-screen adaptation craze that has taken hold across streaming platforms. The Outstanding Movie nomination for Before We Were Yours lands the film in competitive company, but the detail about plot fidelity is worth examining on its own terms. Adaptations that hew closely to beloved source material carry a built-in advantage: a pre-existing readership already emotionally invested in the story's outcome. For a novel that has sold over three million copies, that constituency is substantial. It also raises the critical question of whether streaming platforms are learning — after years of controversial departures from source texts — that faithfulness to the original narrative can itself be a competitive strategy, both commercially and critically.

For Wingate, the Emmy recognition represents a significant milestone for a career built on emotionally grounded, historically rooted fiction. Readers who discovered her work through Before We Were Yours may also find much to admire in The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel by Lisa Wingate, another of her historical novels drawing on underrepresented chapters of American history. The Netflix adaptation gives the underlying story its widest audience yet — and positions Wingate's work firmly within the prestige television conversation heading into awards season.

Want the full verdict on whether the novel lives up to its extraordinary reputation? Read our review of Before We Were Yours for a detailed assessment of what makes — or complicates — Wingate's approach to one of history's darkest adoption stories.