Years ago I saw a daytime TV show that focused on those special relationships mothers share with their daughters. Although I myself am a son, part of the show still resonated strongly with me: One mother had gifted her daughter with copies of books read earlier in her life – at that point in time when the older women had been the age of her offspring in the present. What I found remarkable and touching was that included with each book, was a note, written by mom describing to her daughter the significant events in her life as she had read the work.
My own mother and I (we now live some 7000 miles apart and see each other at most for two weeks each year) have adopted our own ongoing version of this – mailing books across the pond to each other with short essays enclosed.
Most recently, “How to be Lost” by Amanda Eyre Ward.
Mother, I think you will really enjoy this book.
I can't recall what drew me to pull it from the shelf - it was in the clearance section of Half Price Books. It was a dollar.
Once it was in my hand, it must have been the reference to New Orleans that gave me cause to turn a few pages. Then I think the first-page description of the smell of the Crescent City sold me.
Caroline, the central character works at The High Ball, the cocktail lounge at the top of the New Orleans Trade Center. This place actually exists - we'd have seen it clearly from the Natchez that night on the Mississippi. So that's what gave me the traction to get started on this novel - then the strangest thing happened...
The theme of the plot is Caroline's search for her younger sister Ellie, who had been kidnapped as a child some 15 years prior. As I was just a day or two into the book, news broke from California that a girl snatched and missing since 1991 had been found alive: Jaycee Lee Dugard had been pulled into a car at age 11 as she waited for the school bus. For the past 18 years she had been held in a backyard shanty of rough buildings, tents and tarpaulin in sub-urban Antioch, near San Francisco.
The structure of How to Be Lost is complex, with narrative threads pulled from past and present, and through the eyes of multiple characters. It can make for a challenging read in places - with the reader knowing more than any of the individual characters, but struggling to put all of the pieces together. Everything comes into focus faster than you think, and I'm sure you're up to the task!
I was also unaware until I had finished reading the book that it had been written while the author was living right here in Austin, Texas - which makes some sense of the fact that this is a signed copy.
Love G.
Tags: Amanda Eyre Ward, bonding, kidnap, literature, mothers and daughters
