NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel 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.“An absorbing historical . . . enthralling.”—Library JournalBestselling author Lisa Wingate … Journal
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.
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“Lot of history in that old place. Lot of stories. Sad thing when stories die for the lack of listening ears.”
Lisa Wingate has written another amazing story. She hasn’t shied away from writing the hard things from history and remaining true to it. (I hate revisionist history; I want the truth!) She has brought characters to life and honored the lives they represent. As in “Before We Were Yours,” this isn’t always an easy book to read, but it is well worth the journey.
Note: I listened to the audiobook, and the narrators are fabulous.
Oh my. Lisa has done it again. She’s found a practically unknown bit of history and woven an incredible story around it. This is not only a beautiful story, but one we NEED to know about. The actual Lost Friends ads at the beginning of each chapter will break your heart. I rarely cry when reading fiction, but the real story behind this one made tears inevitable. Read this one ASAP.
The Book of Lost Friends is a wonderfully written, well-researched book told in dual timelines from a slave after the war and a new teacher in Louisiana in 1987. The characters are both very well written and representative of their time periods. Their stories seem to be unconnected in the beginning until the end when they join together to finish the book with a big surprise. Lisa Wingate brings to life stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold off.
Louisiana, 1975 is told by Hannie. She was a former slave who was taken away from her mother and siblings before the Civil War. She is now a sharecropper on the plantation where she was a slave and working with her remaining relatives to farm the land for 7 years before they own it. She travels to Texas on a difficult and perilous quest with two unwilling women – Lavinia, the pampered heir to the now-destitute plantation; Juneau Jane, her illegitimate free-born Creole half-sister; and Hannie, Lavinia’s former slave. But it was worth all of the danger to Hannie if she could even find one member of her family. Along the way, they ran into many former slaves who were looking for loved ones so Hannie and Juneau Jane, helped them out by writing letters to the ‘missing friends’ column in the Southewestern Christian Advocate newspaper.
Louisiana, 1987 is told by Benedetta Silva known as Benny. She is a first year teacher with a huge student loan debt. To cancel her debt, she takes a job in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. The town seems suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. The majority of the town send their children to a nice new school while looking down at the school that Benny is teaching at. As she learns more about the town and a dilapidated plantation house, she finally finds a way to connect with her students, but will the town accept her ideas?
I love historical fiction that I learn from and I learned a lot in this book. I never knew about the ads that the former slaves placed to try to find their families who were sold away from them. I wonder how many of them were able to find loved ones and how many searched their whole lives and never found the people they were looking for. This was a tragic time in America’s history and this book gives a clear picture of what it was like.
This was a fantastic book and my new favorite by Lisa Wingate. It beautifully written and emotional novel that I won’t soon forget.
Thanks to the author for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.
The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate is an excellent historical fiction and literary masterpiece. It is an excellent dual timeline tale that weaves the reader a fabulous story that intersects and unfolds to a satisfying and heartfelt ending. This story has it all: history, heartbreak, barriers and troubles, and triumphs.
I enjoyed both main characters: Hannie in post- Civil War 1875 and Benedetta 1987 Louisiana. Hannie is trying to find family dispersed from the recent war. It was fascinating to learn about the “lost family” ads and searches that actually happened at that time. Benedetta is trying to find her purpose and footing as a new teacher in the South during the 1980s. I truly enjoyed both women, both timelines, and the images created by both stories. I even enjoyed the dialect that was used by the author, as it truly added to the experience.
The strength and perseverance that both women have in their respective times and despite their difficulties was inspiring and was definitely admiring. The determination despite what life has handed these women makes for a great read.
A mark of a good historical fiction is one that is memorable, invokes emotions, creates a picture in the reader’s mind to make them feel as if they were actually there, and also gives the reader insight and knowledge of a facet of history that they were not aware of before. This book hit all those marks for me.
This is an excellent read and what, I feel, Historical Fiction truly should be.
5/5 stars
Once again, Lisa Wingate takes a barely-known piece of history and weaves a tale so compelling that after reading it, I wonder why we haven’t known about this for years. Wingate convincingly portray a very personal account of a formerly enslaved girl searching for her family in Reconstruction Era Louisiana, and pairs it with the story of a young teacher working with students in the same Louisiana town in 1987. The juxtaposition is brilliant. It skillfully illustrates cause and effect between generations, and the way one family tree has branches splaying in different directions. The Book of Lost Friends addresses difficult themes without making me feel like all is lost. This is what I love and admire about Wingate’s writing. She doesn’t shy away from ugly pieces of our history, but neither does she resort to sensationalism or tokenism. If there is a pill to be swallowed in the story, there is also a tonic to follow. In other words, we learn, and we may flinch, but we also hope. This novel is written with sensitivity and grace. An extremely worthwhile read.
I think this is Lisa Wingate’s best book yet! Weaving a real historical world into the lives of contemporary characters, Wingate paints eye-opening settings, post Civil War world in the South, and the struggle of many to survive and rebuild their lives. Yet Wingate manages to write the book with realism through an intriguing and interesting cast of characters with a touch of humor that endears you to them. A book I could not put down.
It was with some fear and trepidation that I purchased Lisa Wingate’s newest novel on Audible. Given how much I loved BEFORE WE WERE YOURS (my favorite novel from 2018), I was sure this one couldn’t measure up. My doubt did a disservice to Lisa. In a similar vein as Before We Were Yours, Wingate picked up on a heartfelt story of searing loss and separation, but weaved a brand new, utterly unique story in THE BOOK OF LOST FRIENDS. I fell in love with Hannie, a slave girl in 1875, as much as I did with Benny, a first-year teacher who finds herself fairly out of place in Louisiana, and yet utterly in the right place at the same time. Time-split stories are a new passion, and I love when the stories intersect toward the end…when it all comes together, it’s so beautifully satisfying and rich, like cementing the layers of a cake together with frosting. Wingate has written another tender, evocative, painful, hopeful tale that taught me new aspects of history I hadn’t known about before. It made me feel like I was leaving a friend myself when I finished the last word of THE BOOK OF LOST FRIENDS. Highly recommended.
Heartwrenching and beautiful, this story touched on so many emotions. Parallel stories in post-Civil War south and a young teacher in the 80s.
We follow three young women looking for family and property deeds and legal papers. During the search, they find themselves in danger and not knowing whom to trust. Along the way, they discover “Lost Friends” posts in papers and document many former enslaved people searching for family. Finding family and uncovering truths leads to many secrets.
A young teacher, thrust into a classroom where children segregate themselves by class and color, tries to find a way to engage them with limited resources, children forgotten with lack of funding. Her project to get the children interested in their community, the past, and history, stirs up the surrounding area. What they uncover will forever change many and connect the dots to a part of history some would prefer to ignore.
Hannie and Benny show us history cannot be swept away. This book serves to open eyes, hearts, and minds with understanding while educating us on a forgotten history in our country. May the stories not be forgotten, the names not left unuttered.
**received an ARC from the publisher**
I have to admit that it took me a little while to get into this novel, but it was well worth the investment of my time! The blending of historical fact with fiction is Lisa’s strong suit. Creating strong, memorable characters and story lines is her gift.
I am consistently amazed how Lisa Wingate is able to create such fascinating stories based upon little-known historical events, create totally believable life-like, sympathetic characters then, as their stories unfold, make you feel as though you are experiencing the events of their lives right alongside them. At the end of Lisa’s novels, I am always saddened that I’ll be losing touch with what have become beloved friends.
Just as her previous New York Times best-selling novel, Before We Were Yours, brought to light a tragic period in our history involving an adoption scandal in Tennessee during the early part of the 20th Century, The Book of Lost Friends was sparked by the discovery of a project to preserve the records of freed slaves desperately seeking family members after the Civil War via letters (advertisements) placed in a magazine called the Southwest Christian Advocate which was circulated throughout the South. The ads were posted on bulletin boards and read at the pulpits of African-American churches in the aftermath of the Civil War. Freed slaves wrote what little they knew of their splintered families in the hopes that someone would help them reconnect with their lost loved ones. Some of these advertisements are included in the novel. The heartwarming stories woven around this theme are written with such compassion, authenticity, love and sincerity!
In 1875, Hannie Gossett is a six-year-old slave child who witnesses her family being sold off by an unscrupulous family member of her plantation owner who thought he was sending them to safety in Texas. As the family is torn apart and sold off, Hannie listens as her mother recites their names, the names of those who took them and where each family member was taken. It is the only record Hannie has of her family. Before leaving her, Hannie is given a gift by her mother that will help her to identify other family members, should she be able to locate them at some future date.
A series of events brings together Hannie, who, as a now freed slave is share-cropping on the plantation where she was raised hoping to one day own the land, Lavinia, the spoiled pampered daughter of Hannie’s former owner, and Lavinia’s creole half-sister, Juneau Jane, as they take on a quest that will affect each of their lives. Their journey is full of misadventure, danger and a series of events which bonds them together in unexpected ways. Along the way, they discover the Lost Friends advertisements. It is a heartrending and emotional story of three young women on an incredible journey.
Bennie Silva is a new teacher working off her student loan debt by teaching in an underprivileged school located in Louisiana in 1987. Unable to motivate her students is a struggle when all that is expected of them is that they just show up at school on a semi-regular basis. Performance is not expected, nor encouraged. Bennie is determined to help her students become excited about learning. She finds a way to involve them in a project that captures their interest, though there are some in the town who feel threatened by the history it brings to light and work against her, making every effort to stop her.
This is the type of story that deserves to be discovered by a new generation of readers as well as longtime lovers of historical fiction. It is captivating and intelligently written. As is not unusual with Lisa’s novels, it teaches, dispenses wisdom, captures your heart and makes you want to strive to be a better person.
Listen, the road seems to admonish. Listen. I have stories.
Oh this book! My favorite so far from Lisa Wingate. The readers for this could not have been better and the character voices felt spot on authentic to me. Definitely a story that resonated with this readers (and writer’s) heart.
Combines many of my favorite devices in historical fiction— epistolary elements, split time, some known and some unknown real history, and well-drawn multidimensional characters. Top these off with beautiful writing. Highly recommend.
Another hard hitter from Lisa Wingate. Of course I’m sure she had no idea how relevant this book would be for the times, unless she had a crystal ball when she started writing it. This is a beautiful story that peels back the curtain and gives us a meaningful history lesson on slavery and injustice. It’s heartbreaking and insightful, with two stories beautiful interwoven to demonstrate how we are really all connected in some way. Highly recommended.
With her remarkable talent for finding obscure, heart-tugging, real-life historical events, Wingate once again delivers a tale for the ages. You will never forget the characters on both sides of the timeline. Do yourself a favor and get the audio version. The narrators are absolutely top notch.
Thought provoking especially in these current times. More to follow
I was so excited to get this book when it recently came out. I was moved by “Before We Were Yours”, and knew this had the potential to be just as powerful. Lisa Wingate has a gift and talent for taking seemingly obscure, yet important history and weaving it into a tale that connects the past with modern times.
This is the story of two women Hannie, a freed slave, and Benny, a first year high school English teacher. The story centers around the need to find “our people”. Hannie does that while on an adventure risking her life to find the family that was separated from her through slave sales. She becomes the keeper of the Book of Lost Friends – actual newspaper articles from post Civil War times of freed slaves searching for information about separated family members. Benny begins her teaching career in a poor Louisiana school trying to reach students through the importance of stories. She enlists the help of community members to share the past with her students. This ignites a fire in her students and the research begins. The reader soon realizes everything for both characters is connected to Goswood Grove Plantation in their small town in Louisiana.
Each chapter pulled me in deeper and deeper. I had to know what happened and how the two stories would collide. I will admit it took a few chapters to get into the rhythm of the story, but once I got it there was no putting it down. This is another powerful story told by a master storyteller!
The Book of Lost Friends is a beautiful, yet heartbreaking story about a time in our history that is not talked about very much. As slaves were freed, they tirelessly searched for the family members who were torn from their lives. This book of lost friends was a way to get names out there to try to reconnect with them. Personally, this information was all new to me and not something I had learned about in my history classes.
Set in alternating timelines, over one hundred years apart, the reader follows the lives of Hannie, a former slave and Benedetta, a new teacher in a poor rural school. Lisa does an amazing job with the dual timelines and brings the story together at the end of the book in very creative and satisfying way. I love stories like this one, where two or more seemingly unrelated story-lines all come together in the end.
Just like with Before We Were Yours her previous book, The Book of Lost Friends, Lisa takes a piece of our little known history and brings it to our attention so that we don’t forget. She is a wonderful writer and the story is beautifully written with words of wisdom all throughout. I love this line in particular—”Stories change people. History, real history, helps people understand each other, see each other from the inside out.”
I am definitely a fan of anything Lisa writes. This was a fantastic read and I highly recommended it!
Well written, well researched, compelling story of three girls on a quest in the post-Civil War South – – told through former slave, Hannie. I learned a lot about that time in history and loved the story and the many interesting characters.
Inspired by personal ads in a “Lost Friends” column that ran more than a century ago, Lisa Wingate creates a story that brings to light a network meant to reunite family members long separated by the institution of slavery. Against all odds, sometimes it was successful.
The dual timeline of 1875 and 1987 brings together lives lived at both ends in an entertaining and meaningful way. An excellent novel and worthy follow-up to “Before We Were Yours.”
It took me two chapters to get into the book, but I could not put it down after that.
I so enjoyed this book. It transported me back to a time long ago, a different world, one with courage, goodness and incredible evil. As much as I’ve read about the Civil War, I knew little about the Reconstruction era. I’m saddened that I hadn’t considered the difficulties faced by newly freed slaves when they set out to find their lost loved ones. This book brought that home in fascinating and often heartbreaking detail. Both story lines in the book are quests. The first to reunite a family; the second to build a family. Lisa Wingate wrote yet another great book.