The Lost Story

The Lost Story

Shaffer, Meg. The Lost Story. New York : Ballantine Books, 2024.

“All books are magic. An object that can take you to another world without even leaving your room? A story written by a stranger and yet it seems they wrote it just for you or to you? Loving and hating people made out of ink and paper, not flesh and blood? Yes, books are magic.”

For all grown-up lovers of fairy tales, this book is perfect.

In the Red Crow State Forest in West Virginia, people tend to get lost. First, it was Shannon. Then, five years later, it was Ralph and Jeremy. Ralph and Jeremy came back after six months of being lost, and the community rejoiced. But they also questioned. Ralph remembers nothing. Jeremy says that they lived off of the land until they were able to make it back to a trail they recognized. These are reasonable assertions, except for the fact that the boys came back taller and broader and well-fed, and honestly, there’s not enough of Red Crow State Forest for them to be lost for six months and not be found.

Fifteen years later, Rafe (Ralph changed his name after this experience) lives a life as a recluse. He still remembers nothing, and feels that Jeremy abandoned him after they got back from the woods. Jeremy finds people who are lost, with an uncanny ability to rescue injured hikers, kidnapped children and missing family members.

Emilie has a missing person she needs to find – her half-sister Shannon. Emilie was adopted when she was a baby. She respected her mother’s wishes and didn’t do a DNA database like 23 and Me while she was alive. But after her mother’s death, her curiosity and desire to make connections with her biological family lead to her submitting her DNA. The match she finds is to a missing girl named Shannon, who disappeared at Red Crow State Forest 20 years ago. She reaches out to Jeremy, who drops a bombshell on her – when they were lost, they saw Shannon. More than that, they lived with Shannon in another world. And he wants to take her to her sister, but they need Rafe’s help to do so.

Then the fairy tale begins, and like all fairy tales, there are good guys and bad guys and magic and the power of stories to shape a world. I fell in love with Jeremy and Rafe immediately. Their love for each other and for their family (biological and chosen) is the balm my heart needed this year. Likewise, Skya (Shannon) and Emilie’s love for each other, even though they barely knew each other before they were separated, makes me want to call my brother and really reconnect with him.

This book has many echoes of The Chronicles of Narnia and other well-loved fantasies, but it has created a wonderful world of its own. I’m adding Shanandoah to my list of fantasy worlds I’d like to visit (along with Narnia, Hogwarts, Neverland, Oz, Middle Earth and Wonderland).

This is the second book I’ve read of Shaffer’s, and both have been absolutely wonderful. I can’t wait to see what she writes next (and hope that there’s a sequel to this book, because there are still things I need to know and “see”).

Mary Beth Adams is the Community Engagement Librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at madams@alamancelibraries.org.