Slavery | Paige's Page

“Where will they hear the story if not from you- the story of being stolen away from family?”

Told in dual timelines, Hannie is an 18 year old slave living during the Reconstruction Era in Louisiana in 1875. Having been taken from her family before slavery ended, Hannie joins the plantation owner’s daughters on an odyssey of sorts to find the two girls father while Hannie herself quests to find her own mother and siblings. Benny is a first year teacher in 1987 who wants to make a difference in the lives of her Louisiana students. Benny is working on a school project about local family lineage when her timeline crosses Hannie’s.

“You been in slavery days, you know there’s things a heap less peaceable than being dead.”

It was very slow moving and I really struggled with the pacing. The beginning really dragged, but around chapter 9 something happens and it picks up….momentarily. After that moment of excitement, I found myself twiddling my thumbs for quite a few chapters waiting for the story to progress. It had a few more moments of ups, but most of the time I felt disinterested because it was so wordy. I thought Hannie’s story was powerful, and I wanted more from her. I didn’t look forward to Benny’s chapters as much as Hannie’s.

Graphic violence and gory details are completely left out. There is a scene that hints that something derogatory happened, but it must be inferred by the reader.

I would describe this as a lighter historical fiction about family, courage, loss, and friendship.

Lisa Wingate is a bestselling author. Visit her website.

Read the Shreveport Times article spotlighting The Book of Lost Friends.

Watch the book trailer for The Book of Lost Friends.

I really enjoyed Lisa Wingate’s bestselling novel, Before We Were Yours.

Follow Lisa Wingate on Twitter or Instagram.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy. Opinions are my own.

|Purchase on Amazon | Goodreads Review |

The connection of ancestors and how the dead still effect the living is explored in the tangled web of Irene Paisley and Stanford Solomon’s family. Generations of family members are navigating their life decades and centuries later based on their past ancestors. A domino effect is seen when their Jamaican family members continue to comb through secrets, history, and lineage.

Each chapter goes through a story about a different family member. The multi-generational saga is weaves through different time periods and different family connections.
Jamaican history, plantation life for slaves, and the exploitation of women in 19th century Jamaica is explored throughout the novel as the characters try to atone with the ghosts of their past.

The first chapter starts off a bit confusing. It front-loads all of the characters and many events making it hard to separate who from who and what from what. But after that short introduction, everything fell into place. The Jamaican dialogue was hard to understand sometimes, but I could figure out what was happening overall.

I enjoyed this debut novel and recommend it historical fiction readers.

Visit author Maisy Card’s website.