Lost Lake
Sarah Addison Allen, 2014
St. Martin's Press
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250019820
Summary
The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.
That was half a life ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past. Her husband, George, is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone. All that’s left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires. It’s not quite enough to keep Eby from calling this her final summer at the lake, and relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand.
Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.
Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve, before she learned of loneliness and heartbreak and loss. Now she’s all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope, too, thanks to her resilient daughter, Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward. Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer… and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago.
One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren’t sure they needed in the first place: love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended. Can they find what they need before it’s too late?
At once atmospheric and enchanting, Lost Lake shows Sarah Addison Allen at her finest, illuminating the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Katie Gallagher
• Birth—ca. 1972
• Where—Ashville, North Carolina, USA
• Education—B.A., University of North Carolina, Asheville
• Currently—lives in Asheville, North Carolina
Garden Spells didn't start out as a magical novel," writes Sarah Addison Allen. "It was supposed to be a simple story about two sisters reconnecting after many years. But then the apple tree started throwing apples and the story took on a life of its own... and my life hasn't been the same since."
North Carolina novelist Sarah Addison Allen brings the full flavor of her southern upbringing to bear on her fiction—a captivating blend of fairy tale magic, heartwarming romance, and small-town sensibility.
Born and raised in Asheville, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Allen grew up with a love of books and an appreciation of good food (she credits her journalist father for the former and her mother, a fabulous cook, for the latter). In college, she majored in literature—because, as she puts it, "I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate."
After graduation in 1994, Allen began writing seriously. She sold a few stories and penned romances for Harlequin under the pen name Katie Gallagher; but her big break occurred in 2007 with the publication of her first mainstream novel, Garden Spells, a modern-day fairy tale about an enchanted apple tree and the family of North Carolina women who tend it. Booklist called Allen's accomplished debut "spellbindingly charming," and the novel became a BookSense pick and a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection.
The Sugar Queen followed in 2008, The Girl Who Chased the Moon in 2009, The Peach Keeper in 2011; and Lost Lake in 2014. Allen's 2015 novel First Frost returned to some of her charaters in Garden Spells.
Since then, Allen has continued to serve heaping helpings of the fantastic and the familiar in fiction she describes as "Southern-fried magic realism." Clearly, it's a recipe readers are happy to eat up as fast as she can dish it out.
Extras
From a 2007 Barnes and Noble interview:
• I love food. The comforting and sensual nature of food always seems to find its way into what I write. Garden Spells involves edible flowers. My book out in 2008 involves southern and rural candies. Book three, barbeque. But, you know what? I'm a horrible cook.
• In college I worked for a catalog company, taking orders over the phone. Occasionally celebrities would call in their own orders. My brush with celebrity? I took Bob Barker's order.
• I was a Star Wars fanatic when I was a kid. I have the closet full of memorabilia to prove it — action figures, trading cards, comic books, notebooks with ‘Mrs. Mark Hamill' written all over the pages. I can't believe I just admitted that.
• While I was writing this, a hummingbird came to check out the trumpet vine outside my open window. I stopped typing and sat very still, mesmerized, my hands frozen on the keys, until it flew away. I looked back to my computer and ten minutes had passed in a flash.
• I love being a writer.
• When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
Every book I've ever read has influenced me in some way. Paddington Bear books and Beverly Cleary in elementary school. Nancy Drew and Judy Blume in middle school. The sci-fi fantasy of my teens. The endless stream of paperback romances I devoured as I got older. Studying world literature and major movements in college. Who I am, what I am, is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of stories. And there are still so many more books to read. I'm a work in progress. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Allen is the master of magical details and plots that combine a fairy-tale sensibility with character-driven pathos. This imaginative, lyrical novel is an intricate web of magical misfits, Southern gothic charm and the power of new possibilities, both romantic and redemptive.
NPR
It is always a pleasure to read Allen’s work. Her signature magical touches are something readers anticipate. They will not be disappointed with this story…There’s nothing like a little "Allen magic" sprinkled on a book to make it a fascinating reading experience to be savored.
Wichita Falls Times Record News
Allen's work is such a treat…Like a cook who seasons just so, she adds flavor but not too much, and serves a satisfying literary meal without making you overstuffed…Lost Lake is a delightful way to spend some time this winter.
Durham Herald-Sun
A romantic and dreamy story of love and second chances.
Asheville Citizen-Times
Sarah Addison Allen delivers a feel-good story with touches of magic.
Entertainment Weekly
All of the magic of Allen's previous books is present in this latest treasure, a feast of words. The author has the ability to capture the soul of her characters and make them relatable to every reader. This is a story of love, loss, grief, and starting over—it is truly a treat to be savored.
Romantic Times Book Reviews
Charming, bittersweet and ultimately hopeful, Lost Lake is a treat for fans of Addison's previous novels or those who simply love a good Southern story.
Shelf Awareness
[A] widow and her daughter find healing at a quirky summer resort.... The overused family business–versus-developers trope doesn’t particularly add to the story, and Allen’s trademark mystical touches are not as effective as usual, but her eccentric cast of characters and charming Southern setting will win readers over.
Publishers Weekly
A year after her husband's death...Kate and her eight-year-old daughter Devin leave the confines of Atlanta to explore Lost Lake in Suley, GA, and oh the adventures they have! A collection of quirky characters, all with wisdom to share, bring this story to life, and none shy away from the chance for even greater personal growth —Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A surefire star of feel-good fiction, Allen always manages to nimbly mask her potent messages of inspiration and romance beneath her trademark touches of mirth and magic, but this endearing tale of surprising second chances may just be her wisest work yet. —Carol Haggas
Booklist
Old wrongs are righted for a motley community of Southerners in this latest, semienchanted novel.... Tragic pasts abound...and each lakegoer is haunted to a different extent. It's clear from the beginning that healing is on the horizon for everyone. Light, sweet and sparkly.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The title of this book is Lost Lake, and the theme of loss runs throughout the entire narrative.
What did you think the titular lake’s name meant when you started reading the book, and did
that idea change for you over the course of the book?
2. Storytelling plays a large role in the lives of many of the characters in this story—and Kate, a
born storyteller, has the power to alter Wes’s perspective about his sad and troubled past just
through one powerful retelling. Who else tells themselves stories about their history, and do
you think all their stories are true?
3. Eby’s falling-down resort attracts misfits of all kinds, some more likable than others. Which
characters did you find the most endearing? And which, inversely, alienated you? Were there
others who won you over by the novel’s end?
4. Sarah Addison Allen writes a sort of everyday magic into her stories that sets her apart, and it
seems to touch every character in a different way. Lisette experiences a heartbreaking sort of
magic, in the haunting companion who shares her kitchen and her silence. Devin, meanwhile,
experiences a haunting of sorts too—but one that feels far more innocent and hopeful. Why do
you think these two characters are the ones to experience ghosts firsthand? What sets them
apart from their compatriots at the lake?
5. Other characters, like Kate and Eby, experience their life’s magic as a sort of enchantment,
unpredictable and yet not unpleasant. Did that carry over to you as you were reading it? Did
the characters’ easy acceptance of day-to-day magical happenings make it easier for you to
believe in them too?
6. The art from the postcards of Lost Lake hold great meaning to those who see them. Would any
of them make you want to visit Eby’s home? What did you think of the last one that shows a
young and in love Eby and George? Were they pictured the way you’d visualized them?
7. What was your view of Wes before you read the letter he finally shared with Kate? How did that
change when you learned what he had done all those years ago?
8. The women in Kate’s extended family are all too experienced with widowhood. Eby calls it the
"Morris curse." But all of the widows react very differently to their tragedies. What is it about
some of the Morris women that makes them especially vulnerable to losing themselves in grief?
What, do you think, would have happened to Kate and Devin had Kate never ‘woken up’ from
her own sorrow?
9. Eby says that if "we measured life in the things that almost happened, we wouldn’t get
anywhere." Do you agree? You may wish to talk about your own fateful "almosts" as well.
10. At the end of the book, Eby is bound for Europe again, traveling for the first time since her
honeymoon. What do you think draws her back there, and what do you imagine she might send
or bring home from her travels?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)