Shannon's Library

LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK!

Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both. But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. When a horrific tragedy strikes, Naomi and John are separated from each other. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually…make peace with who they are.

Shannon’s Rating PG-13 (There is quite a bit of violence in this book – as was typical for the time period – and a woman is raped.)

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LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS BOOK!

Oh, my goodness. I have so many thoughts and so much to say about this book. (Which, I just finished reading about an hour ago, by the way. That’s how anxious I am to write about this one and process all of my feelings.)

First of all, “Where the Lost Wander,” by Amy Harmon is very much along the same vein as “These is My Words,” by Nancy E. Turner. In case you don’t know, “These is My Words” is in my top ten favorite books of all time. So, when I say I liked “Where the Lost Wander” almost as much, you know that’s really saying something about this book!

Secondly, to know why this book hit so close to home right now for me, you need to understand a little bit about what’s been going on in our world lately. An awful tragedy struck our community last week. It was eerily similar to what happened to my family years ago when we lost my little sister as a senior in high school. All my repressed emotions from that time have resurfaced this week and it’s been weighing heavily on my heart. The sadness has felt overwhelming at times, both for this dear family who lost a loved one – and for my own family who lost our Tara.

These are the emotions I was feeling as I picked up “Where the Lost Wander” to read. The prologue of the book starts right off with a tragic, awful event. I was shocked and wasn’t sure I wanted to continue reading – given my frame of mind this week. But I kept going. And what unfolded to me, was a book full of finding beauty in the hard. Finding joy among the sadness. Finding love among the hurt. Do I believe in tiny miracles and tender mercies? Absolutely. I believe in a Heavenly Father who answers prayers we haven’t even uttered. My heart has been heavy this week. I didn’t know that what I needed was to read a story about other people’s hardships and how love brought them through it. (And, yes, I choose to refer to fictional characters as “people.” It’s just what I do.)

A quote from the book says, “It is not love if it doesn’t hurt.” There is a lot of hurting in this story. But there is also an awful lot of love. When a child dies in the book, the remaining family finds comfort in knowing the child was loved.

Their grief is a comfort. It’s like Jennie said. It isn’t love unless it hurts, and their pain tells me he was cherished, he was loved, and he is mourned, and at the end of life, no matter how short, that is all there is.

This quote struck me hard this morning. It’s what I had been feeling all week but hadn’t been able to put into words. At the end of life, no matter how short or how long the life is, love is what matters. “That is all there is.”

I don’t think it’s coincidence that I started reading this book on Memorial Day, when memories and thoughts of lost loved ones are already so close at hand. Maybe I should have been clued into what I was about to read by the title of the book, “Where THE LOST Wander” but I wasn’t. All of us have lost loved ones. Siblings, parents, spouses, children, friends. No matter how long we have with our loved ones, it’s never enough time. But if it hurts when they’re gone…it must be because it was love.

One of my favorite characters in the book is a wise, old Shoshoni woman called simply, Lost Woman. She is given this name because of all the family members she has tragically lost over the years. She finds comfort in knowing that spirits watch over her. She knows when they have been near because she sometimes sees their prints in the snow. These spirits, “They make you brave and keep you warm,” Lost Woman tells us. I won’t give away the ending of the book, but the tracks found in the snow (a few different times) are what really got me crying. Not the depressing kind of crying. But the healing, warm kind of tears that we all need to shed once in a while.

“Where the Lost Wander” is a beautiful book. Amy Harmon is a word genius. The love story between Naomi and John is one of my new favorites in literature. But the true strength of this book is the message of love triumphing over loss. I will be forever grateful that I picked this book up, read it in a day and neglected my children on the first day of summer vacation.