Fourteen-year-old Sarah Louise Vance climbed out her bedroom window on the night of January 9, 1939, four months pregnant from being raped by her mother's boyfriend, and Sarah walked two miles through the darkness to the Tallahatchie River planning to walk into the water and drown herself because Sarah could not bear the shame of being pregnant at fourteen, could not bear her mother's anger and the town's judgment and the knowledge that in six months she would give birth to a baby conceived in rape, and Sarah stood on the riverbank at midnight preparing to walk into the water and end everything—end the pregnancy, end the shame, end the pain—and a man walking past saw Sarah standing at the river's edge and realized what Sarah was planning and ran to her and grabbed her and pulled her away from the water and Sarah screamed "Let me go! Let me die! I want to die!" and the man held Sarah while she sobbed and said "I can't let you do that. Whatever's wrong, dying isn't the answer. Come with me. Let me help you."
Sarah had been raped by her mother's boyfriend—a man named Dale who had been living with Sarah and her mother since Sarah's father died—on September 3, 1938. Dale had raped Sarah while Sarah's mother was at work, had told Sarah if she told anyone he would kill her and her mother both, and Sarah had been too terrified to tell anyone. Sarah had gotten pregnant from the rape and hadn't realized she was pregnant until she was three months along and her stomach was starting to show and her mother noticed and demanded to know what was wrong with Sarah, and Sarah had finally told her mother everything—told her about Dale raping her, told her about being pregnant—and Sarah's mother had not believed her, had called Sarah a liar, had said Sarah had "gotten herself in trouble" with some boy and was blaming Dale to avoid punishment.
Sarah's mother had told the entire town that Sarah was pregnant, had told everyone Sarah had been sleeping with boys and had gotten herself pregnant, and the town had turned on Sarah—called her a whore, a ****, a disgrace—and Sarah had endured four months of shame and judgment and her mother's anger while Dale continued living in their house acting like nothing had happened, and Sarah had decided she could not endure another day of this life, could not bring a baby into this world, could not survive the shame, and Sarah had climbed out her window planning to drown herself in the river.
The man who saved Sarah—a traveling preacher named Reverend Thomas Walsh—brought Sarah to his church and Sarah told him everything, and Reverend Walsh believed Sarah, believed every word, and Reverend Walsh contacted women's advocacy groups and found a home for unwed mothers where Sarah could live until the baby was born, a place where Sarah would be safe from Dale and from the judgment of the town. Sarah moved to the home in January 1939 and lived there for six months and gave birth to a baby boy in July 1939. Sarah was fourteen years old when she gave birth.
Sarah gave the baby up for adoption—couldn't raise a child conceived in rape, couldn't look at the baby without remembering Dale—and Sarah spent the rest of her life wondering about the son she had given away, wondering if he was alive, if he was happy, if he knew that his mother had been fourteen and raped and had given him up because she had no other choice. Sarah never married, never had other children, worked as a seamstress her entire life, and carried the weight of that night on the riverbank for seventy-six years—carried the knowledge that she had climbed out a window planning to die and a stranger had saved her.
In 2015, when Sarah was ninety years old, a man contacted her through a genealogy website. The man was seventy-six years old—born in July 1939—and had been searching for his birth mother for decades, and the man had finally found Sarah. The man's name was Thomas—named after Reverend Thomas Walsh who had saved Sarah's life—and Thomas told Sarah he had had a good life, had been adopted by loving parents, had married and had children and grandchildren, and Thomas wanted to meet Sarah and thank her for giving him life even though the circumstances of his conception had been horrible. Sarah met Thomas in 2015 and held him and cried and said "I climbed out a window seventy-six years ago planning to drown myself and drown you with me. A stranger saved us both. You have had a good life. That makes everything worth it. I gave you up because I couldn't keep you. But I never stopped thinking about you. Never. For seventy-six years I have thought about you every single day."
Sarah Louise Vance died in 2016 at age ninety-one, one year after meeting the son she had given up for adoption seventy-seven years earlier. At Sarah's funeral Thomas said: "My birth mother was fourteen years old when she was raped. She got pregnant. The town called her a whore. Her own mother didn't believe her. My birth mother climbed out a window planning to drown herself in a river. A stranger saved her. She gave birth to me six months later. She gave me up for adoption because she was fourteen and had no way to raise me. I had a wonderful life. I was loved. I was happy. I exist because a stranger saved my mother on a riverbank in 1939. My mother lived seventy-seven more years after that night. She got to meet me before she died. She got to know I had a good life. That is what survival looks like. That is what happens when one stranger decides to save one girl on one night. Two lives saved. Mine and my mother's."