Lisa Wingate (The Book of Lost Friends) at Read It Again Bookstore

Summary

Lisa Wingate is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Before We Were Yours, which has remained on the NYT Bestseller List Hardcover and softcover lists for 104 weeks and has sold over 2.5 million copies. She has penned over thirty novels and co-authored a nonfiction book, Before and After with Judy Christie. Her April 2020 novel, The Book Of Lost Friends, became an instant New York Times Bestseller. The story follows an unlikely trio of girls coming of age as they embark on a perilous journey through reconstruction Louisiana and Texas… and a modern-day teacher in small-town Louisiana who rediscovers their story. The Book Of Lost Friends was inspired by the real-life “Lost Friends” ads, through which families separated during slavery sought to find their lost loved ones in the chaos following the Civil War. A reader and museum volunteer from the Historic New Orleans Collection connected Lisa with HNOC’s vast database of over 2500 Lost Friends ads, which chronicle the heart wrenching and hope-filled searches of separated families, and which inspired the story of eighteen-year-old Hannie Gossett in the novel.