The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel

Five Stars Minus. I bought this book for two reasons: (1) I liked her book Before We Were Yours and (2) a close friend recommended it highly. The book switches between two main points of view. Hannie is a former slave in Louisiana in 1975. She is looking for the members of her family who were stolen and sold before the end of the Civil War. Bennie is a teacher in Louisiana in 1987. She is a new English teacher at a small town school in the shadow of the plantation where Hannie lived as a slave. True confession: I started this book two times before I forged ahead. The switching point of view made the beginning less engaging and there is a Kindle specific problem. The hook to this story is the search for Lost Friends. I had no idea that in the years after the Civil War, many freed slaves composed personal ads with their family history and published the ads in a newspaper. That newspaper asked churches throughout the South to read and post the ads. The aim was to reunite family and friends separated by slavery and the Civil War. It is compelling and interesting. Unfortunately for Kindle readers, the actual ads that end Hannie’s chapters are reproduced as graphics that cannot be enlarged. If I turned my light to a very bright setting and changed my glasses, I could puzzle through the ads. Needless to say, that took me out of the story and made reading in bed disruptive. Hence, the stopping and starting. The third time was the charm, and I got caught up in the story. Hannie is bright, strong, resilient, and loyal. She is on a great journey through Louisiana and Texas to find her family and to find her former owner. The details and dangers of the journey are written well. Bennie is also a good character. She is trying hard to connect with her students and connect them with the possibility that their lives can be different. Many of the town residents are descendants of the plantation owners and slaves. This is a book where you can care about the characters, including the secondary characters. There is romance that is romantic. (No graphic sex scenes for those who care.) I enjoyed this book. I would have enjoyed it more without one “surprise” secret revelation that comes near then end. To avoid spoilers I will not say more, but to me it cheapened the story and lessened the impact. Nevertheless, this is history that I did not know, and the writing is very good.

It is 1875 and a still young country is emerging from the harrowing events of its lengthy civil war. In the aftermath of that conflict, both freed slaves and their former masters have begun the fraught process of attempting to reconcile the past while looking to the future. Hannie Gossett, a young woman who is now sharecropping on the Louisiana farm where she used to be a slave, has just embarked with two other girls on a long and dangerous journey to Texas in an attempt to reunite with the family she has been separated from for most of her life. Along the way, Hannie will come across many other former slaves also trying to find their own people, which leads her to keep a journal of those hopeful and heartbreaking searches for all of the “lost friends”. It is 1987 and Benedetta Silva, a thirty-something woman reeling from a failed relationship and other secrets she is afraid to confront, has just begun a job teaching English at an underserved high school in rural Louisiana. The only place she can find to rent is a dilapidated outbuilding of a once grand plantation estate that is on the edge of the town’s cemetery. In an effort to reach her disinterested, underachieving students, Benny launches a project that will force them research their own personal histories and, in the process, force an unwilling community to confront the horrible legacy of their shared past. With the aid of Nathan Gossett, heir to the plantation properties, the two unlock century-old mysteries that connect the two timelines. In The Book of Lost Friends, Lisa Wingate does a wonderful job of weaving together the stories of these two women, who end up having a lot more in common than anyone might suspect. Told from both Hannie’s and Benny’s perspectives in alternating chapters, the novel bounces between the two stories fairly smoothly, building the suspense in each quite nicely. The only real problem I had with this literary device is that Hannie’s story was substantially more interesting and engaging than was Benny’s; in fact, the angst level in the latter went a little too far so that, by the conclusion, that whole plotline bordered on being melodramatic. Still, the author did an impressive amount of research to produce this work of historical fiction and I found it to be a pleasurable reading experience from beginning to end.

As someone who loves historical fiction, I finally dove into this powerful novel while recovering from the flu. I enjoyed the dual narration between Hannah Gossett, a newly emancipated former slave, and Benny Silva, a dedicated teacher in an underfunded school. Though the beginning felt slow, the story picked up as I discovered how the lost letters intertwined their narratives. I was especially moved by the emotional weight of the letters from former enslaved individuals searching for their loved ones—many bought and sold without a trace. This book beautifully illustrates the resilience of the human spirit in the face of tragedy and the enduring hope of reconnecting with family. Highly recommend!

Loved it, good book group read

Really good read. Wonderful characters. Characters really brought to life spectacularly. Loved how th he two stories past and present linked. Very sad and true of the life lived in those times. Would definitely recommend.

Loved it

Schnelle Lieferung. Guten Zustand.

This novel switchesbetween the two story lines with each new chapter , a former slave’s journey and near death experiences to find relatives sold away before emancipation, and a teacher’s struggle to inspire her unruly class in 1980s Louisiana by getting them interested in their past. It’s a great premise and the author is an impressive writer. Personally though, I found the book overly long and at times I felt quite disconnected from the story. The ending was brief, including the modern protagonist’s back story which seemed almost like an afterthought. Before each chapter is an extract from the ‘Southwestern’ where former slaves posted details of relatives sold away which would be read out in African American churches, a sobering reminder of the enduring pain and evil of slavery even after it was abolished. So many must never have found parents or siblings they were so brutally parted from