Holly Goldberg Sloan—the author of The Elephant in the Room, Counting by 7s, and other works for young readers—returns with Finding Lost, a middle grade novel about grief and the power of nature to heal. It’s been more than two years since middle schooler Cordy’s father, a commercial crab fisherman, drowned. Unable to afford their cozy rental home in a small coastal Oregon town, Cordy, her younger brother Geno, and their mother move into an acquaintance’s boathouse. Simultaneously, Mom waits tables and forms an “escape plan” to a better life. Then Cordy finds and adopts a lovable stray dog with extremely bad breath, whom she names Lost, setting into motion gradual changes that allow the family to open themselves back up to love. Sloan spoke with PW about fostering empathy, building community, and protecting the natural world.
Why did you focus on Cordy’s relationship with Lost, the family’s recently adopted dog?
Part of it is personal. I had a dog as a child. That dog was so important to me. We moved a lot when I was a kid, and when you move, the dog has to adjust in the same way that you do. And as a kid, I would watch the dog learn a new neighborhood, smell new things, meet new dogs, the same as when I met new kids. I think that one of the most powerful relationships a child can have is with an animal. Animals love unconditionally. They need us and they aren’t very judgmental. Those things are so important, not just while growing up, but once you’re an adult, too.
The family has been struggling financially since Cordy’s father’s death. Why was it important for you to showcase this element?
One of the things I’m trying to do in this book is show different parts of our society and community that are not as visible. It feels like, as a culture, we have become somewhat obsessed with money—and not just with the acquisition of money, but the display of money. What happens to people who don’t have that? What happens to people who might find that just taking in a dog becomes one mouth too many to feed?
But at the same time, in opening yourself up to the world without fearing the consequences, the world’s going to reward you for that. And that’s what happens with Cordy’s family. It poses questions about priorities and values: what we care about and who we care about, and why we choose to care. The act of caring for a dog causes the family to step outside their own grief. If you’re working to solve somebody else’s problems, it makes you think less about your own.
In an author’s note, you write that Finding Lost was inspired by your admiration for “the special people who work hard every day enriching life in small town communities.” Can you elaborate?
Before my mother died at the age of 94, a friend of mine said I should make a video asking her what her wishes were. I knew she wanted to be cremated, and I had a pretty strong idea of where she would want me to place her ashes, but when I started to record her, what she said did not jive with what I thought she was going to say. She said, “I want you to take me to Florence, Oregon.” I haven’t been to Florence in 30 years. I had a huge familiarity with the place as a child, but none as an adult. My friend later said to me, “I think she wanted all of you to go back. She was saying that for you. She wanted you to get your brothers and your children and go to this place and see how special it was.” So we went, and we put my mom’s ashes right where she told us to, and I made a connection to this place that I hadn’t had in a long time.
I started reading the local newspaper, and I saw that there’d been a terrible accident with the only surviving commercial crabbing boat in the area. I kept thinking about it. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Something happened that was very sad to people who are out there working so hard for their community. In some ways, the characters in this book are stand-ins for other people in my life, especially from when I was growing up. Not only parents, but mentors, too: teachers, librarians, neighbors. All those people form a community. Retired people, people just passing through, people whose families have been there for generations.
Cordy knows that her mother wants to leave. But it’s the only place that Cordy has ever known. Sometimes I ask myself, “Would it be right for them to leave? Is that the better thing, or is the better thing to stay?” What does leaving look like? What does staying look like?
Cordy also cultivates a previously unrealized passion for the ocean. What inspired this angle?
The Oregon coast is a very wild place. The water is cold. Growing up, all of us knew somebody who’d lost their lives in that ocean, and so you approach with caution. In Cordy’s case, her father works on a boat. She has spent time on the dock. Her father tells her she’s a daughter of the sea. But she doesn’t feel that, because she’s always been afraid of it.
There’s something powerful about such a big expanse of water, of something way bigger than you, way more powerful than you. It’s the same as turning off all the lights and looking up into the sky and seeing all the stars. There’s an aspect of it that tells you that you are one small particle in something much bigger. It’s looking at nature in a spiritual sense; it’s recognizing and understanding that we’re the stewards of that. We need to protect that. We are that. It’s the same as learning a new word; once you start to see something, it’s everywhere.
That happens to Cordy. She finds a dog, and that dog sniffs everything and barks at everything and sees everything, and though she’s worried about the dog, the dog is showing her the world, and the dog is helping her lead a bigger life.
Finding Lost by Holly Goldberg Sloan. Rocky Pond, $17.99 Oct. 7 ISBN 978-0-593-53025-2
