The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars | 24,640 ratings

Price: 19.69

Last update: 01-04-2025


About this item

New York Times Best Seller

From the best-selling 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 Journal)

Best-selling 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.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Constant Reader
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good Characters, Compelling History, Good Writing
    Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2020
    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.
  • Browner
    4.0 out of 5 stars A Moving Connection of Past and Present
    Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2020
    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.
  • Blue Eyes
    5.0 out of 5 stars A heartbreaking and heartwarming book
    Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2024
    Benny is a newly graduated school teacher in a poor school in Louisiana. She lives in a falling down house with a cemetery as a neighbor and no friends. Her students come to school hungry and some come sporadically. She is trying her hardest to get them interest in literature while scouring the nearby mansion for books for a classroom library.

    Alternate chapters are 100 years in the past. The story of Hattie, a slave girl whose family was sold off when they were taken by her “Masters” nephew to Texas for safety, her being the only one rescued from Jen Loach. She was returned to the Louisiana plantation and when emancipated was working her 10 years towards freedom, when “Master” disappeared during a search for his no good son. “Master’s” legitimate and illegitimate daughters fell afoul of a man called Marsten, and Hattie, who had posed as a boy to drive them to a meeting, took it upon herself to rescue them and then proceed with them into Texas to complete their quest.

    Eventually the two stories commingle with an interesting conclusion.
  • Lisa Graziano
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Story, History, and Lost Families Found
    Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2024
    It was about two different women who went through a difficult period. One was a teacher who tries to inspire her students to take pride in what they learn. And she came across information that inspired her to push her students to learn some more about their own history besides taking more on reading and learning. As for the other woman, she was an enslaved person who tried to help two young women in their pursuit of her father's important papers that will say who will inherit his properties. She traveled beyond what was her home, and learned how big the world was, Along the way, she learned about herself, too. In the end, she got her own happy ending. You will have to read this one. Not everyone will like this story, due to prejudice.

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