The Book of Lost Friends

In 2020, veteran novelist Lisa Wingate released The Book of Lost Friends, an historical novel set in contemporary Louisiana with flashbacks to post-Reconstruction Texas. The first of the novel’s two storylines traces the adventures of three women who, a decade after the Civil War, undertake a dangerous journey from war-ravaged Louisiana to the open frontier of Texas in an effort to reclaim their families. The second follows the efforts of a first-year high school English teacher in rural Louisiana to use the town’s painful past to excite her students to feel the compelling power of history and storytelling. Critics and readers alike praised the novel, a New York Times best seller, for its inspirational portrayal of the triumph of powerful women in demanding circumstances and its timely message about the importance of learning from history.

This study guide references the first edition from Ballantine Books.

Plot Summary

After a brief Prologue set in contemporary Louisiana, the novel opens in 1875 on what used to be the Gossett Grove Plantation near Augustine, Louisiana. Now, ten years after the Civil War, it is a profitable farm with people who were formerly enslaved there working as sharecroppers. 18-year-old Hannie Gossett, brought to the plantation as a child, is still haunted by dreams of her family, in particular her mother, lost to her in the slave markets in Texas twelve years ago when the plantation’s owner, the war nearing its end, sought to move his holdings to Texas out of the reach of the invading Union army. Hannie alone of her family was taken back to Louisiana.

She has never given up hope to return to Texas to find her family. Hannie has sharecropped the farm for almost ten years. At the end of ten years, she has been promised the standard buyout for a sharecropper: 40 acres of land and mule to farm it. The farm itself is currently in litigation as the head of the family, William Gossett, never returned from a trip to Texas to help his errant son out of a legal jam. Without the head of the family, the farm’s ownership devolves to his daughter, Miss Lavinia. However, that inheritance is contested by 14-year-old Juneau Jane, a half Creole who is Gossett’s illegitimate daughter by a New Orleans prostitute. The two half-sisters decide to travel to New Orleans together and consult the family’s attorney. Disguised as a boy, Hannie drives the carriage to the city concerned about the disposition of the farm. To uncomplicate the inheritance question, however, the family’s lawyer arranges to have the half-sisters kidnapped and shipped out of Louisiana on a steamer by hiding them in trunks. Hannie figures out the women are in the trunks and hastily jumps on board the boat, headed for Texas.

Nearly a century later, Benedetta Silva, fresh out of college, arrives in the same town, Augustine, Louisiana, to begin her first year teaching English. She has taken the job as a way to pay down her considerable loan debt. She is not prepared for the poverty of her new school and the apathy of its students. She is determined, however, to get the students to love stories as much as she does. Benny settles uneasily into her new assignment. The students have long since given up hope in their education. Benny begins to explore the town and is drawn particularly to the huge Gossett mansion. The family maintains a stranglehold on the town’s economy. With the help of Granny T., a wizened old woman with a long memory of the town’s history, Benny researches the town’s story. She is also aided by a new friendship with Nathan Gossett who opens up his family mansion’s considerable library to Benny and her students. To her delight, Benny finds the students fascinated by their town’s history and in the stories of their Civil War ancestors, both Black and white.

Back in 1875, when the crates are unloaded at the first landing in Texas, Hannie follows after she is unceremoniously thrown off the boat as a stowaway. The three women find their way to a small rural Black church where they stay for several days to recover. In the church, they find small ads from a regional newspaper posted all over the walls in which Black people separated from their families during the war seek information trying to reunite with their lost families. Hannie becomes obsessed with using this vast informational network to find her own family. As the three journey through Texas, a difficult and dangerous odyssey through untamed frontier teeming with carpetbaggers and ex-Confederate soldiers, Hannie herself gathers stories from the people they meet. She and Juneau Jane gather the steadily accumulating wealth of stories into a ledger she fashions and calls Book of Lost Friends. In the end, despite encounters with many rouge criminals in Texas, Hannie has an emotional reunion with her family.

In contemporary Louisiana, even as her relationship with Nathan deepens, Benny becomes embroiled in local politics and decades-old family feuds. Her students want to present a kind of pageant in which each student would take the story of one of the town’s ancestors, dress up like the person, and present a dramatic reading of their story. A group of white locals object to the presentation of painful stories and family embarrassments they believe are best left forgotten. In fact, in her research into the mansion’s library holdings, Benny uncovers the century-old evidence of how Juneau Jane, Gossett’s illegitimate half-Creole daughter, was denied her rightful inheritance through racist legal maneuverings. As the day of the pageant approaches, Benny is threatened with job termination if she continues with the presentation. Benny, with Nathan’s support, moves forward with the class project. The pageant becomes a sensation on social media, and the school (and Benny) are recognized by the state government. In the closing pages, Benny reveals that as a teenager she gave up a daughter for adoption. She expresses hope that someday the time will be right for her to find her own lost family.