The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate is a delightful read in so many ways. It’s a unique story, combining two narratives set nearly one hundred years apart. Our first narrative focuses on Hannie Gossett, a slave girl separated from her entire family who works as a sharecropper after the Civil War. Hannie’s story intertwines with that of her former master’s daughter Missy, as well as his secret love child Juneau Jane. And the three take an extraordinary journey searching for answers to their broken families. The second story is set in the 1980s and follows a high school teacher fresh from college, Benny Silva. Benny moves to Augustine, Louisiana and learns she has her work cut out for her in a town full of history and secrets.
I am typically not a fan of books with two completely different, alternating storylines. I find myself getting invested in one and then wanting to skip over the other to get back to the one I find more interesting. While Wingate managed to keep my interest in both plots, I still was a little more interested in Benny’s story than Hannie’s. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t skim parts of Hannie’s story. These alternating stories are just hard for me. Anyone relate?
Wingate is an excellent writer, and her ability to set the scene and utilize setting, tone, and little details to paint a vivid picture is incredible. She is very skilled with dialogue. For example, when we’re reading from Hannie’s perspective, she writes all dialogue and all of Hannie’s thought processes in the same consistent tone of a young, uneducated slave girl. While Hannie’s story is darker and more serious, Wingate lightens the book in Benny’s chapters by writing in a lot of humor and wit to Benny’s thought-processes and interactions. This doesn’t take away from the gravity of circumstances in Benny’s storyline, but it keeps the book from feeling too heavy.
The book moved a little slowly at the beginning and at different times throughout. There were some loose ends that I didn’t think were tied up very well at the novel’s close. In fact, I kept waiting for things to start wrapping up or trying to figure out how Wingate was going to tie Benny and Hannie’s stories together. Nothing happened to do so until at least 90% through the book, and then it felt a little rushed. There were also some relationships that seemed underdeveloped and thus unbelievable.
But aside from that, I really did enjoy the novel. I think Wingate is a great author who knows how to really convey emotion and very human stories. She kept me engaged and guessing throughout the 400-page book. I felt connected to her characters and invested in their endeavors. Wingate also includes snippets of real “Lost Friends” advertisements from the 1800s that help bring history further to light.
What I really appreciated from the book is the emphasis on the importance of history, even painful history. Rather than pretending it didn’t happen, or removing evidence from the history books and from towns, Wingate – through her characters – encourages the preservation of history for the purpose of learning from it. Benny says at one point, “I’m trying to impress upon my students that everyone has history. Just because we’re not always happy with what’s true doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know it. It’s how we learn. It’s how we do better in the future.”
Jessica
Copyright Lisa Wingate and Quercus. Image from Amazon.com.