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Trade Paperback
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9781984819901
Overview
Overview
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a new historical novel: the dramatic story of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students' lives. Bestselling author Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual "Lost Friends" advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away. Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Hannie, a freed slave; Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now destitute plantation; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia's Creole half sister. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following roads rife with vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of stolen inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery's end, the pilgrimage west reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope. Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt--until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, is suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and run-down plantation homes lie the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Wingate, Lisa
- ISBN: 9781984819901
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.00 x 0.90
- Number Of Pages: 416
- Publication Year: 2021
Customer Reviews
Rating Snapshot
5 ★
67%
4 ★
33%
3 ★
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2 ★
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1 ★
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6 Ratings
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0% Would Recommend
0 Recommendations
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Pick up of my book was very easy as was the ordering on line.
JEANNE M. - 5 years 4 months agoI loved this book. Lisa Wingate told an amazing story. I will buy more of her books!!
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The book of lost friends
Cheryl F. - 5 years 10 months agoGreat read even though some connections and events were hard to believe in the literal sense.
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great historical fiction
Katie B. - 6 years 4 months agoThis book is written during 2 time periods - the end of the Civil War and the 1980's. The back and forth is interesting and makes it hard to put this one down. The characters are charming and easy to love, and Wingate writes a descriptive and detailed story about a painful part of our country's history. As an educator, I loved the 1980's perspective of a new teacher in a tough school guiding students through such gut-wrenching content. I highly recommend this for your #summerreading
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The Book of Lost Friends
Carol K. - 6 years 4 months agoI love historical fiction. The Book of Lost Friends was so informative about the mid-1800's and slavery. Even though emotionally difficult to read, it was a book I was glad I read!
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Author Lisa Wingate surrenders to the spark and writes “Stories [that] change people. History helps people see each other from the inside out.“
Jennifer N. - 6 years 5 months agoIt’s beneath the books on a billiard table that a masterpiece is discovered “a quilt of sorts, an enormous live oak tree created in a mixed media of silk fabrics, embroidery floss, felt leaves, paints or dyes, and photographs slipped into padded fabric frames with clear plastic covers. At first it looks like a work of art, but it’s also a careful documentation of history. The story of...the people who have inhabited this land since the early 1800s. Deaths and births, including those that took place within the bonds of marriage and beyond them. A nine generation family tree. A story both black and white.” “They share roots, these live oak groves. They’re all one tree under the soil. Like a family, made to be together, to feed and shelter one another...all tied together by the tangled history in this Bible, by the fact that the enslaved people of a plantation shared their master’s last name. Some changed the name after emancipation. Some kept what they had...names possibly handed down through the generations like an heirloom--a coin or a favorite piece of jewelry--from long-dead ancestors who possessed no tokens to pass along, save for their names and their stories.” Bennie, Hannie, Juneau Jane, and even Missy Lavinia represent myriad shades of race, history, and female identity. “The sort of remarkable women who built the legacies we enjoy today. Teachers, mothers, business owners, activists, pioneer farmwives, community leaders who believed, in some large or small way, that they could improve the world for present and future generations. Then they took the risks required to make it happen. May we all do the same in whatever way we can come in all the places we find ourselves.” We are all in a sense Saint Anthony of Padua, patron saints of lost causes. The Book of Lost Friends, an odyssey of how we sojourn as sisters to get found. Lost Friends is not solely a narrative of inspiring women; it is also the story of heroic men, kinsman redeemers and prodigal fathers. What we perceive to be the bain of our existence often proves to be our redemption. “The man was true to his word. I can’t say why, except that he ain’t what I thought he was. He ain’t the devil. He’s the man who saved us.” True love is defined by sacrifice, most poignantly demonstrated toward those who deserve it the least. “What could bring him there into the wild? But deep down, I know. I answer my own question. Love. That’s the only thing that’s a thing that would do it. The love of a father who can’t give up on his only son. Who’d wander the entire world if need be to bring his boy home. Lyle didn’t deserve that kind of love. He didn’t return it, except with bad deeds and fast living and trouble....But he couldn’t make hisself give up hope.” What a beautiful picture of our Heavenly Father, who “demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). But in the end, “It's the words mama says that last the longest of all.” “You’re not defeated until you give up the fight...Future belongs to the man that faces hisself straight on...The most important endeavors require a risk… If we don’t begin the journey, we’ll never know where it could lead...The past travels with you. It’s whether you run from it or learn from it that makes all the difference.” If readers transform story into community, star ratings should transform into constellations! The Book of Lost Friends gets all of them!