How To Be Lost is a mesmerizing book that really takes off in the fifth chapter. It is primarily the story of Caroline Winters, a trained-pianist working as a cocktail waitress. Her lack of effort in her career is reflective of a general disconnectedness shown in other areas of her life. The things she once felt passionate about have dulled, and she seems disconnected, or rather, closed off and somewhat irritated by the relationships in her life. Over Christmas, Caroline is faced with a dilemma: her pregnant sister Meredith wants to finally declare their little sister, who disappeared at age 5, dead so they can all move on. But Caroline’s mother who has never stopped searching, shows Caroline a clipping from a magazine of a girl who might be Ellie all grown up.

Caroline’s decision to search for her missing sister is not so much a belief that Ellie is alive, as an expression of her rootlessness, her ability to pick up and leave. It is on this search where Caroline’s heart is exposed—the hurts that have caused her to close off to others, the fears and hopes she has kept to herself. Carline returns to music in order to support herself in the town where she believes she’s found her baby sister. And in being away, she learns what it is she misses back home.

The novel is full of hope and heartbreak. But the real gift of this book, where you feel its impact, is in its unique structure. Though the story belongs primarily to Caroline, the reader is really following the narratives of two other characters, also lost and incomplete, and how those narratives intersect in the end.

—Susan Henderson