The Book of Lost and Found

July 1, 2015
An artist's sketch of a young woman, hidden from sight for years, bridges connections in this multigenerational love story. After Kate Darling's famed ballerina mother, June, dies in a plane crash, Kate is shocked when her adoptive grandmother gives her a sketch of a woman closely resembling her mother and confesses to having rebuffed requests from June's alleged birth mother to meet. The sketch turns out to be an early work by renowned artist Thomas Stafford, who is stunned to once again see his portrayal of the love of his life, Alice Eversley. The aging Stafford unreels his story to Kate in his home in Corsica, sending her to Paris and New York on a quest for answers about her family heritage. Foley deftly handles narratives by multiple voices that move seamlessly back and forth from the 1920s to 1986, with a vivid section set in Nazi-occupied France, as Alice and Tom are separated by happenstance, war, and deceptions as painful as they are well meant. A lovely and moving debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)