The Book of Lost and Found

The novel alternates between the present-day story of Kate Darling, a young London photographer grieving the loss of her mother, and the decades-spanning love story of two people shaped by war, secrets, and sacrifice.

Kate's mother, June Darling, was a world-famous ballerina who rose from an orphanage to international stardom before dying in a plane crash in April 1985. June was adopted as a child by Evelyn Darling (Evie), a former dancer whose career ended after a car accident. A year after June's death, Evie, now in a nursing home, confesses a secret to Kate: When June was twenty, a woman named Célia wrote claiming to be June's birth mother. Evie never told June, terrified of losing her. Along with the letter, Célia sent a pen-and-ink drawing of a woman who looked almost identical to June, dated 1929 and signed with intertwined initials. Evie dies of a stroke days later. Among Evie's belongings, Kate finds letters from Célia, one for every year June performed, revealing decades of silent devotion.

Haunted by the drawing, Kate enlists her ex-boyfriend Charlie, an art-world contact from her days at the Slade School of Fine Art, who brings it to Agnes, a gallery owner and scholar. Agnes identifies it as an early work by Thomas Stafford, a famous reclusive painter. Kate tracks down Stafford's sister, Rosa Delaney, and writes to him in Corsica. He replies with an invitation to his home, the Maison du Vent, a restored Genoese villa on a Mediterranean cliff.

Kate arrives in August 1986. Oliver, Stafford's architect grandson, is suspicious of her motives. When Stafford sees Kate, tears fill his eyes: She is the image of Alice Eversley, the woman he loved. He explains that "Célia" is simply an anagram of "Alice," a code from their childhood. Over the following days, Stafford paints Kate's portrait while telling his story.

He and Alice met as children in 1913 during a summer holiday in Cornwall, where Alice's father, the polar explorer Lord Robert Eversley, rescued Tom's father from a capsized dinghy. Lord Robert died in an Antarctic expedition later that year, and Alice's older brother Archie was killed at Ypres during World War I.

Fifteen years later, in 1928, Tom and Alice reconnect at a party. Alice encourages Tom to pursue art and introduces him to her aunt, Lady Margaret, a wealthy eccentric who critiques his work and urges him to develop his own style. They fall in love. During a country-house weekend in September 1929, Tom sketches Alice by a lake, producing the drawing that will set Kate's journey in motion. That night, they sleep together for the first time. Alice then departs for Venice with Lady Margaret, where she meets Julien, a charismatic French Communist. Her letters to Tom grow brief and careless.

After Alice's return, months of silence follow. Tom and Lady Margaret discover Alice hidden at the estate of her stepfather, Lord Hexford, a Fascist. In the walled garden, Alice tells Tom she is pregnant but claims the father is Julien. Tom offers to give up everything, but she refuses. She later appears in London, gaunt and alone, to say goodbye before leaving for Paris.

Meanwhile, Oliver's hostility toward Kate softens. He confides that his marriage collapsed when his wife, who had a manic-depressive condition, left him for an older politician. Kate confesses she never felt close to Evie until it was too late. A mutual attraction builds.

Stafford reveals that after the war, he traveled to Paris to find Alice, only to be told she had been executed, one of fifty hostages shot in reprisal for a Resistance attack. Devastated, he went to Corsica, where he married Elodia, a woman with a young daughter who had been cast out by her family for a wartime affair. They married for companionship and grew to care deeply for each other. Then, in 1979, a postcard arrived from Alice with a Paris return address. Stafford never answered because Elodia was dying.

Stafford gives Kate the postcard. Before she leaves, he shows her the finished portrait, which reveals a strength Kate did not know she possessed. Oliver travels with Kate to Paris. On the overnight ferry, he tells her that his mother, a model who desperately wanted to be an actress, died of an overdose the morning after his tenth birthday.

In Paris, they visit the address and meet Marguerite, a woman in her fifties whom Alice raised from childhood, first as governess and later as guardian. Marguerite tells them Alice is in New York, running a gallery. Oliver books Kate a flight. On their last evening, Oliver confesses he has been unable to stay away from Kate since they met. They spend the night together, and Kate departs for New York the next morning.

The novel interweaves Kate's New York visit with the story of Alice's wartime years. After leaving Tom, Alice reinvented herself in Paris as a waitress, then became governess to the children of the De Rosiers, a wealthy Jewish family. She also worked at a small archaeology museum alongside Étienne, the owner's son, and Georgette, a student. When the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, Georgette recruited Alice into a Resistance cell. Alice adopted the false identity "Célia" and helped produce and distribute propaganda. Étienne and Georgette fell in love and married.

The Gestapo arrested all three. Alice endured approximately a year of solitary confinement at Fresnes Prison. When prisoners were sorted into two groups, Georgette begged to join Étienne, and a guard swapped Alice into Georgette's original group. Étienne, Georgette, and others were taken to a forest and shot. Alice's group was sent to a labor camp in Poland, where she survived nearly three years before liberation.

In New York, Kate meets Alice for the first time. Alice is frail but immaculately dressed, with luminous silver eyes. She reveals she did not abandon June: Her mother, Lady Hexford, told Alice the baby had died during a difficult birth. Alice did not learn the truth until she was forty-one, when her mentally broken mother confessed. Alice delivers a second revelation: Tom Stafford is Kate's biological grandfather. She never slept with Julien. She lied about the baby's paternity to protect Tom's ambitions, knowing he would abandon his dreams to support them. After the war, Alice traveled to London to find Tom but learned from Rosa that he had married. She accepted it was too late.

Kate is furious, then comes to understand. Alice used her Aunt Margaret's inheritance to build galleries in Paris and New York, naming them after her friend Sophie De Rosier, who perished with her husband trying to flee France. Alice collected Stafford's work obsessively, attended June's performances once a year, and even visited Kate's degree show at the Slade. She describes her life as a record of what was lost and what was found.

A postscript set in 2015 reveals that Alice died in autumn 1987. She left Kate nearly all of Stafford's work. Stafford's portrait of Kate was found in Alice's apartment beside a photograph of June; tucked behind the frame was an envelope addressed to Miss Alice Eversley, though the letter it once contained was never found. Stafford has also died. Kate and Oliver are together and visit the Maison du Vent often. An epilogue describes the two drawings, of Alice in 1929 and Kate in 1986, hanging side by side. Passersby might mistake them for portraits of the same woman, but the resemblance is familial, the expressions uncannily alike, spanning almost a lifetime.