How to use this Page

Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr. Little Brown. 2009. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. Young Adult.

The Plot: Samara "Sam" Taylor is not having a good summer.

Everything seems broken or run down, as the heat builds. Her mother's secret drinking is not so secret anymore, thanks to a DUI and court-mandated residential rehab. Her father is more dedicated to his work as a pastor than to being a father. Money problems may mean that Sam doesn't go back to private school. The backyard garden is a pile of dirt; even the air conditioner and fans aren't working properly.

And then thirteen year old Jody Shaw, from her father's congregation, who Sam kinda knows from her Church youth group, disappears.

Sam is having doubts; a crisis of faith. Thinking things, wondering things, that she cannot say aloud because she's a pastor's kid. Everyone thinks they know who she really is; who her family really is; and thinks they have a right to say what she should think, do, believe.

The Good: Zarr delivers both an intensely personal, internal story of faith and belief; and a suspenseful mystery involving a missing teen.

Sam has good reason to question her faith. Her family is falling apart; faith, belief, love have not helped her mother. They don't help her father be a better father. They don't help Jody Shaw's family. Once Was Lost is about more than questioning, though; it's an exploration, with Sam remembering her earlier child-like faith and now looking at others, wondering, how to believe again. What does she want? Is it the faith of her childhood? Zarr handles Sam's spiritual dilemma with respect -- respect for Sam, of course; but also respect for religion, and faith.

The disintegration of Sam's family has brought her to her spiritual crisis. Her mother, Laura Taylor, is an alcoholic. I want to cry from happiness as I read the kind, nuanced portrayal of Sam's mother. It's easy to make an alcoholic parent the bad guy; we've all read tons of books where drinking = abuse = evil. But the reality is more complex than that. For this reason alone, it's on my list of favorite books read in 2009.

As Sam's father responds to some need of his congregation, Sam thinks, "sober, tipsy, drunk, whatever, [my mother is] the one who's been here, and she's the one who really knows me." The perfect illustration of how little Sam's father sees what is going on in his own household? He has no idea just how lost Sam is feeling. Just like Sam's mother isn't "teh evil" because she drinks, neither is Sam's father "teh evil." Neither of these parents are portrayed as bad, terrible, no-good people; rather they are real people, not perfect, with flaws, people who try and do the best they can.

As Sam looks back at the last three years, at what her family is now as compared to then, she wishes "there was a way to put your finger on the map of life and trace backwards, to figure out exactly when things had changed so much: when we started getting the dregs of Dad, if that was before or after the drinking getting bad. ... Still, it doesn't explain how on