The Book Of Lost Friends

 The Book Of Lost Friends was inspired by a column in post Civil War magazines where readers could publish a letter asking about the whereabouts of their family members. Black ministers were asked to read the columns aloud at the weekly services. Lisa Wingate takes actual letters that were published and puts them in this book. Some letters mention what year their family members were sold at auction and to what state they ended up. This story takes place in southern Louisiana and Texas. The year is 1875 and three teenage girls from Louisiana travel to Texas. Two of the girls are trying to find their father, a plantation owner. The third girl is coming along to protect the other two but also to find her family, her mother, her sisters and brothers, who were sold away from the plantation where she lived. That story alternates in chapters with another one set at the same plantation in Georgia only now the year is 1987. A new school teacher has come to teach English at the high school. Her experiences at a high school with inadequate supplies and impoverished students challenges her. When there aren't enough copies of Animal Farm to go around, she has her students research their ancestry at the local library instead. Some of her students are descendants of the three girls who traveled to Texas. Why the author chose to include the story from 1987 is beyond me. I think a better story would have focused solely on the story from 1875.