Overview
The book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate an historical novel set in contemporary Louisiana with flashbacks to post-Reconstruction Texas. In 1875, the Gossett Grove Plantation in Louisiana is a profitable farm where former slaves work as sharecroppers. Hannie Gossett, an 18-year-old who has sharedcropped the farm for nearly ten years, is troubled by visions of her family, notably her mother, who she lost in the Texas slave markets twelve years ago. After being returned to Louisiana, Hannie shared the farm with her half-sisters, Juneau Jane and Benedetta Silva, who arrived in Augustine, Louisiana to teach English.
Benedetta is unprepared for the poverty of her new school and her students’ apathy, but she is determined to teach them to enjoy stories as much as she does. She begins to tour the town and is captivated to the massive Gossett estate, which dominates the town’s commerce. With the help of Granny T. and a new connection with Nathan Gossett, Benny discovers that the students are interested by their town’s history and the stories of their Civil War ancestors, both black and white.
As they travel through Texas, Hannie and Juneau Jane collect stories from the individuals they meet, compiling them into a notebook titled Book of Lost Friends. Despite confrontations with numerous rogue criminals in Texas, Hannie experiences an emotional reunion with her family.
In modern Louisiana, Benny becomes involved in local politics and long-standing family feuds. Her kids want to stage a pageant in which each student chooses a story about one of the town’s forefathers, dresses up as the person, and performs a dramatic reading of the story. A number of white residents object to the exhibition of painful stories and family embarrassments, but Benny, with Nathan’s help, pushes ahead with the class assignment. The pageant goes viral on social media, and the school and Benny are acknowledged by the state government.
Chapter 1 Summary
The brief prologue serves two important objectives. The image of the ladybug alighting on the teacher’s hand is based on Southern mythology, where the ladybug is considered a sign of good luck. Thus, the narrative begins with an omen of optimism, a promise that things would improve. The novel guarantees readers early on that despair will not be the final word. Furthermore, without providing the specifics of the story, which is that this is the Halloween class performance of the stories of Augustine’s antebellum ancestors, the prologue transitions to the student/actor’s single dramatic statement: “I am Hannie Gossett,” which figuratively brings the character to life. As the novel returns to the historic Hannie Gossett, the juxtaposition foreshadows one of the novel’s central themes: the intertwining of past and present, as well as the energy and immediacy of history.
The introduction of the historic (albeit fictional) Hannie Gossett focuses on three elements of her character and story: 1) the impact of her painful separation from her family during the heyday of slave markets; 2) her resourcefulness, how she is still in her teens working to become an independent farmer with her own 40 acres; and 3) her maturity in acting boldly and decisively when she recognizes that her sharecropping contract may be jeopardized given the ab
These components accentuate Hannie Gossett’s strength and courage. Compared to the other two young women, both under the age of twenty, who will shortly become her traveling companions, Hannie emerges as powerful and independent. In contrast, Juneau Jane appears to be prone to rash and emotionally charged confrontations, which are typical of the immaturity and impulsiveness of young girls her age. Miss Lavinia, the Gossett farm’s heiress, is self-centered and arrogant. She is confident in her white privilege and dismisses Juneau Jane, her own half-sister, outright as a social misfit. She is cruel and racist in her statements about Hannie and the half-Creole Juneau Jane.
At this time in the narrative, Hannie steers the action. Unlike Juneau Jane, she understands the long-term consequences of the farm owner’s disappearance and possibly death. She understands the need of taking action to safeguard her rights. She is resolved not to be a passive victim (as Juneau Jane will be, much later). She is just a few months away from finishing her sharecropper contract. She will keep that vow. The lesson she learnt when enslaved and away from her family is clear: she will not be taken advantage of by whites again. In this, she demonstrates boldness and proactive empowerment that defies gender and age norms. Indeed, Hannie will spend much of the novel disguised as a boy and mistaken for an older man. Her name, Hannibal, refers to a character in Roman military history who was famed for his fierce tenacity, will, and drive to prevail against all obstacles.
In these early sections, the novel draws parallels between Reconstruction-era Louisiana and modern-day Louisiana by transitioning from the story of Hannie and her quest to secure her independence and financial security by acquiring 40 acres of farmland to the story of Benny Silva and her quest to succeed in her job as a public-school teacher. The contract she forms to work in public schools in economically poor places to pay off her massive student loan debt reflects, like Hannie’s contract to secure her 40 acres after ten years of service, the best path for her to a future and security. They are both characters searching for hope.
The first chapters also highlight significant disparities between the two main protagonists. Benny exhibits her emotional shortcomings, in contrast to Hannie, who demonstrates her character strength. Benny initially lacks Hannie’s ingenuity. She is hypersensitive to her failings in the first few days of class and cannot find a way to interact with her kids other than by offering them chocolates and cakes. She is uneasy in her interactions with the town’s citizens and overwhelmed by her feelings of isolation. She has a lot to learn. Benny feels out of place in Augustine from the start, and she blames her emotional vulnerabilities and social ineptitude on her broken family. At this point, she does not reveal her daughter’s secret. Only on the second reading does the impact of that broken family become clear, as Benny fights others and sinks within her own space. She refuses to comprehend the nature of her students’ life, the severity of their economic issues, and their own sense of powerlessness. Blithely, she believes reading novels is just what they require. If Hannie teaches Juneau Jane the knowledge of peaceful persistence and patience, Benny will learn the same lessons in quiet strength and loving generosity from her student LaJuna, who is introduced here as the only one of her students who will cooperate and respect her even minimally.
Granny T., introduced when Benny, powerless with a leaky roof, must travel to town for assistance, provides the novel’s first suggestion of a solution to both Hannie’s and Benny’s problems, demonstrating how both are bound to a past from which they cannot escape. Granny T. suggests to Benny that sharing stories is therapeutic because it places those ready to listen in a context broader than themselves. Nothing is worse, she tells Benny, than stories that never reach open ears. Both Hannie and Benny will come to learn this knowledge.
Chapter 2 Summary
As the narrative moves from 1875 to 1987, these sections introduce three themes that are crucial to Benny and Hannie’s emotional development: 1) The past cannot be disregarded; 2) the heart must open up to the generosity of compassion and caring; and 3) the heart responds to the enduring, tonic spell of storytelling.
These sections include two types of fiction: mystery thrillers and road adventures. Benny’s tentative examination of the Gossett family mansion (which is in serious disrepair) creates a frightening feeling of mystery. The abandoned estate resembles scores of mystery stories about the chilling effect of long-buried family secrets. As Benny gingerly makes her way through the tangled gardens and then through the graveyard with its broken tombstones, the mood of neglect prompts a clear response from Benny, who believes there must be a secret in this family’s forgotten past to explain why such a “magnificent” (84) home was allowed to fall into disrepair.
As Benny looks through the thick, wavy glass of the mansion’s dusty windows, she senses a magnetic pull of mystery. After all, she majored in English. She is intrigued to the idea that these are the ghosts of many stories. “Books are tools.” “But the stories that aren’t in books, the ones no one has written down, those are also tools,” she remarks (80). As she goes around the family cemetery, looking at the inscriptions on the tilting, mossy tombstones, she senses the presence of those unwritten stories: “Maybe [these stories] may help me comprehend this place and my kids. Maybe they can assist my students comprehend one another” (80). In these chapters, Benny decides that the transforming force of history could help her reach her students. In the graveyard, she had an insight about reaching out to her kids by sharing tales.
Benny’s story establishes a typical mystery story and affirms the validity of storytelling and the need to connect with others; Hannie’s journey incorporates aspects of an adventure story, a road trip with the most improbable of traveling companions. If Benny’s chapters delve into her psyche and expose her emotional responses in scenes of minimal activity, Hannie’s chapters focus on exteriors and the adrenaline rush of fast-moving events. The account of her two traveling companions’ mysterious disappearance, Hannie’s skulking through the shadows along the dangerous docks teeming with roughnecks and scalawags before stowing away on the Genesee Star, and her dramatic and unsettling discovery of Missy’s necklace are scenes rich with cinematic flair, driven not by interiors but by the rich energy of suspense and twists. No scene here more dramatically demonstrates that cinematic flair than when Hannie is unceremoniously tossed off the slow-moving boat by Moses, a foreboding man she believes to be a threat at this point, though she will learn much later that Moses tosses her off the boat to protect her from the thugs hired to protect the Gossett properties, a plot twist worthy of the grand tradition of nineteenth-century narrative.
at a nutshell, the Hannie chapters are the stories Benny will hear all around her at the cemetery a century from now. Hannie’s fascinating narrative of stowing away on a boat going for Texas with two buddies, maybe alive or dead, stuffed in shipping crates, brings history to life. The reader discovers what Benny senses in the graveyard, and what Benny’s students will soon discover: the allure of history as storytelling.
Nathan Gossett, the rising figure, symbolizes this notion of history as a story. Nathan stands out in a tale that is so heavily based on the past. Nathan, with his nonchalant and dismissive attitude toward his own family’s troubled history, represents a life purposely shut off from the past. He appears carefree, unconcerned, and even unengaged. He has reduced his life to the basic necessities of the time. He spent little time in Augustine. He prefers to escape by shrimping in the Gulf’s soft openness. As he will later explain, his sister’s early death (a sister who neglected her own health in order to uncover their family’s history) convinces him that the past is toxic and should be avoided.
Nathan, like Benny’s students, will receive a crash training in the importance of listening to prior stories. As Benny wonders as she travels around the neglected graveyard, these stories can enable persons living today live fuller, richer, and deeper lives by linking them to others, just as the slow-motion disclosure of the Gossett family secret would eventually bring Nathan and Benny together.
Chapter 3 Summary
The transition into these middle chapters emphasizes the necessity of hope in the face of overwhelming odds and how easy it is to succumb to despair. This movement is characterized by the insertion and juxtaposition of three extratextual literary sources: 1) “Wade in the Water,” a Black spiritual about the plight of Israelites in exile in Egypt and their struggle to keep hope alive; 2) hundreds of ads for lost family members placed in the Southwestern Christian Advocate during Reconstruction; and 3) a modern parable based on Loren Eiseley’s essay “The Star Thrower,” which has become celebrated as a parable about solving the world’s problems one person at a time.
In many ways, Hannie’s hardest moments occur in the days following her reunion with Missy and Juneau Jane. Missy and Juneau Jane are of little use to Hannie after being kidnapped by the Gosset family attorneys, crated into trunks, and shipped down the Mississippi. Juneau is as feeble and useless as “a blind chicken”, and Missy appears to have been emotionally and possibly psychologically damaged by the kidnapping. She can’t force herself to talk or react, her eyes “shifting up and down a little, lazy-like”. Hannie is the only one who guides the three through the wetlands’ desolate and treacherous backroads, despite her own worries of panther attacks and hunger. When the group stumbles into the church in the middle of nowhere, it reinforces the importance of never giving up and never succumbing to despair. After days of utilizing the church as a shelter, the trio hears distant singing that only gets louder and more assertive, and the hymn inspires both Hannie and Juneau. The lyrics describe the Israelites’ desperation, their fear of never finding their way home, and their resolve to give up hope. “Wade in the water, children,” the hymn advises. “God’s gonna trouble the water.” Trust in God and his spiritual guidance, and everything will work out.
The discovery of the advertisements on the church’s walls adds to the theme of persistent hope. At first, Juneau Jane had no notion what newspapers are. She takes the posted ones down and stuffs them into her shoes to help her withstand the next hike. When she begins to read them, she and Hannie learn they are about the hopes of formyl enslaved people who want to be reunited with their ripped separated family. As Hannie, who is unable to read or write, listens to Juneau Jane read ad after ad, the implications become clear: “My thinking swells like the river after a big storm. Grows, spins, and pulls up everything that’s been weighing on my soul for months and years (186). Under the impact of the advertisements, both young girls agree to assist each other in their long-term endeavor to find their way back to their family. “I think,” Hannie says Juneau, “I might have to take myself to Texas.” (192). Juneau begs to attend as well; she has a missing father and an inheritance to claim. And so, with the worthless Missy in tow, the two embark on their trek to hope.
Benny, for her part, finds the task of instructing her students increasingly irritating. Nothing she studied in her education theory lectures prepared her for the reality of a classroom full of young brains that had already closed their eyes to the potential of education and given up hope. Her commitment in these chapters to help her students comprehend the wonder of their time by introducing them to the impact of their own town’s history serves as the vehicle for her journey into hope. Granny T.’s impressive presentation in her classroom prompts Benny to seek alternatives to the texts allowed by the town’s predominantly white education board.
Her excitement is contagious. Stories will be a strategy for involvement, as will the great excitement she feels just looking through the dark windows at the shelves of volumes in the Gossett mansion library. She will lead her kids to hope, one inspired student at a time. She draws inspiration from a Loren Eiseley essay she read in college, which advises that even the most difficult tasks may be overcome with patience and attention to the work. She refuses to let up, despite Sarge’s warning that having her students begin to investigate the small town’s buried history will enrage influential individuals, particularly the Gossett family, which still controls the town’s economy. Benny understands that the class project will disrupt the established quo and spell difficulties for her, as she remains an outsider and is exposed to employment threats. Nonetheless, she sees in the project’s promise a fire in her kids that she has never witnessed before. In the classroom, her students respond one by one to the concept of investigating their own town’s stories. Benny, like the beachcomber in the article, refuses to accept her lost kids’ repressive reality. In motivating them one at a time, she finally understands the dynamic of hope.
Chapter 4 Summary
The novel continues its investigation of hope by using three interconnected elements: 1) the emerging volume of heartbreaking stories gathered by Juneau and Hannie on the open road in Texas, examples of which are actually shared between chapters; 2) the rapidly evolving plans for the school pageant that, by presenting stories of the town’s ancestors, will demand the town (and the Gossett family) make peace with their past; and 3) the deepening of the relationship between Nathan Gossett and Benny and the hints scattered in these chapters of a secret. This last dynamic may best define this area. In a tale that contends that confronting a painful past is the only way to accept optimism, Benny’s refusal to expose her own past to Nathan becomes the driving force behind her story. Even while Hannie longs for her family, Benny is still unsure about hers. If Hannie wants to reclaim her family, Benny needs to acknowledge it first.
Hannie opens this section by resolving not to return to Louisiana, believing that her slave history, as well as her long connection to the Gossett family and their farm, are no longer part of her identity. Under the influence of listening to the stories of Black families torn by the war and still striving to reconnect, Hannie thinks it is time for her to establish her identity. For the first time, Hannie, who is so magnificently stoic, admits to being lonely, aching for a family she scarcely recalls and a home she has never seen. She defines her heart to Juneau as a “burden”. Texas is intimidating. Hannie is first sad as she enters the zone. “This is strange land. She acknowledges it’s empty. The more they go into the open country, Hannie notices that the world seems larger and emptier. When she discovers that the Gossett family lawyer has fled town, and she finds herself in the noise and stink of the town jail on a fabricated charge of horse stealing, Hannie moves toward her darkest moment: “In the dark, I stir and finger the place on my neck where Grandma’s blue beads should be. I think about Mama and how everything has gone wrong since I lost the beads, and how I may never see her or any of my people again in this world” However, just as she is feeling the most alienated and defeated, the boy Gus McKlatchy makes an unexpected intervention. In this tale, despair never has the last word. Gus not only returns Hannie’s necklace, but also secures her release from jail. The recovery of the beads prompts Hannie’s most dramatic epiphany. She grips the beads, holding them close and breathing them in. She claims that the necklace “fills and carries me up until I could spread my arms and fly like a bird.” Fly straight out of here”.
Benny is in her own prison. Even while her students enthusiastically explore the possibilities of responding to the local history project, Benny remains distant. These chapters provide the first signs of a secret she is harboring. Her burgeoning acquaintance with Nathan Gossett seemed to be leading to a relationship. When Nathan abruptly enters her classroom, Benny seems curiously flustered. Every time they chat, she gets a peculiar tingling in her words. She examines the intricacies of what he is wearing, approves of his casual demeanor and easy sense of living without anxieties, and recognizes his gift of “living squarely in the present”. Benny must yet discover that Nathan’s easygoing demeanor conceals his own rough past and struggle to accept his imperfect family.
Benny and Nathan appear to be on the verge of becoming more than just pals. Benny, on the other hand, refuses to explain to him or the reader why she avoids committing to the relationship and maintains what she calls a “safe” distance . Only Hannie’s counternarrative, as a lost daughter yearning for her family, may hint at the nature of her secret. At this moment, however, Benny refuses to tell Nathan the truth about her past, despite her expectation that the people of Augustine will utilize the class pageant to engage with their own.
