"Once Was Lost" by Sara Zarr

I don't think I read the jacket of this book before reading it.  Sara Zarr's Once Was Lost was a book I had seen around in bookstores and the library and I guess I wanted to read it for that reason alone.  It wasn't the read I was expecting (though I'm not sure what I expected), but I enjoyed it quite a bit.


Once Was Lost is the story of Sam (short for Samara) a small town girl and the pastor's daughter.  At first I thought this book was going to revolve around Sam coping with the reality of having a mother in rehab, but the book is so much more.  The plot takes off when Jody, another teenage girl, turns up missing.  As the town searches and prays for Jody, Sam finds herself spending more and more time with the missing girl's brother Nick (one of the suspects in the case).  As the book progresses, Sam begins to push boundaries, question her faith and looks at her world with new eyes.

I still don't know what sort of story I was anticipating from this book, but I think that Zarr's writing is captivating and that readers can find a bit of themselves in Sam's tale.  Even though this book focuses quite a bit on Jody's disappearance, the book is solely about Sam and how she is dealing with the events in her life.  It's a short book, but it certainly a good one!



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Happy Reading!
-Melly