Lost and Found—Novel Explores Parenthood and Redemption

In The Lost Daughter, Lucy Ferriss constructs a gripping and emotional tale of a young wife and mother whose past catches up with her and profoundly impacts the present.

When a secret Brooke and her high school boyfriend Alex have kept for 15 years is finally revealed, the lives of everyone Brooke loves, including her husband Sean and her young daughter Meghan-and a family she didn't even know existed-are threatened. Brooke must come to terms with a very different reality from what she's constructed over the years and confront the wide-reaching consequences of both her actions and inaction.

Ferriss, originally from St. Louis, Missouri, has lived in Connecticut since 2000, when she began teaching writing and literature at Trinity College in Hartford. She is the author of five previous novels, a collection of short fiction, and a work of literary criticism, and has published dozens of short stories, poems, and essays.

Ferriss talked about The Lost Daughter in a recent Living interview.

This is your first novel published since Nerves of the Heart in 2001, which asks, "What happens when a boy gets the heart of a girl who dies in an accident?" This novel asks, "What happens to the baby left for dead in a crate outside a motel?" What draws you to writing about such powerful subjects?

I like to write stuff that's a little bit edgy. There are lots of excellent writers that write domestic dramas that are quite good, like Anne Tyler. I write what's more on the cusp of controversy. So in just about everything I write, there's kind of a public argument about it. To me, often those things are really quite personal, so I tend to write personal stories that have a kind of resonance, are important to our culture. They're often gleaned from the news, headlines, and my reaction to those headlines that gets me thinking, "How on earth could this have happened?"

The pair of teenagers in the late 1990s who threw a baby into a Dumpster spawned the Safe Haven laws throughout the country. Everyone was so shocked. It was such a depressing subject. Then it occurred to me the baby lived-the idea of that. As I was getting older, the characters in my head were getting older. I was more interested in the guilt we carry throughout our lives than the idea of throwing away the baby. My interest became more in the characters later on [in their 30s].

You delve into a hot topic-abortion-in a nuanced way that's usually treated as black and white by politicians and the media. In our culture, we have the very vocal right and a lot of people who seem afraid to even broach this subject. What did you want to say that isn't being said?

I actually have addressed this-in The Misconceiver [1997], set in 2027. Roe vs. Wade has been overturned and abortion is back in the closet. [There's] the whole issue of women and reproduction and the ways in which moral choices and choices of personal freedom get very tangled up and turned, as you say, into black and white in the public discussion. I don't know one woman who's had an abortion and doesn't feel awful about it, but feel they can't come out and say how they feel-like it's giving a rubber stamp to what they've done-they're a sinner or a murderer. Women have miscarriages; we acknowledge that they mourn. Brooke is in extended mourning because she can't express [her feelings]. It's all personally and politically really intertwined.

Another area you explore is the idea of motherhood/parenthood and what really makes you a parent-blood or commitment or chance?

These are really complicated issues: Brooke's journey coming to terms with being the birth mother, but she has not been there. The other thing she really has to come to terms with is this weird superstitious idea that she couldn't have another child and has to give herself permission. Only when she can let go of this notion that the past is everything-she has to spend her life doing penance or she has to find some way to fix it, but you can't fix the past-can she forgive herself.

You also show how families come in very different "sizes and shapes"-Najda, Brooke's and Alex's birth child; and Luisa, who found Najda; and her grandfather Ziadek and aunt Katarina. Why did this unlikely family adopt Najda?

I just love them. They're so grounded, even when they're mad at each other. They cope with what life has thrown at them. No one really wants or needs this baby-[it was] "We found the baby; let's keep the baby." I'm not Polish; they just came from a part of me, people that would deal in a matter-of-fact way with the challenges at hand. Luisa has Down's syndrome, but she still has a journey of her own, she has a daughter with these disabilities and has to learn how to be a mother.

What about the idea that we can never escape our past and the grief we may have experienced or caused until we face our choices and the consequences?

There's no way around it-I'm not interested in beautiful people with high-flying ambitions and international careers. I'm interested in characters who have flaws and strengths and are wrestling with those things, and I want to follow them and see what happens and how they deal with it.

Ultimately, it looks like you believe that people can change and adapt and express love in different ways-is that true?

There's a wonderful quote by a poet named Charles Olsen: "People don't change, they only stand more revealed." It seems to me when you're inventing characters, through the actions and the course of time, you're peeling off their layers until you find out what their true self is, and that true self is going to make the change as well. If they change at all it's in their understanding of who they are and what their lives are really like. I think every character is in a better place than at the beginning of the book, but if you look forward into the future for these characters, they still have challenges; they're just in a better place to meet those challenges-they're more honest.

Lucy Ferriss will give a talk and booksigning at R.J. Julia Booksellers, 768 Boston Post Road, Madison, on Wednesday, Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. Tickets to the event are $5, which can be applied to purchase of book. For more information and to purchase tickets, call the bookstore at 203-245-3959 or visit www.rjjulia.com.

The Lost Daughter by Lucy Ferriss (Berkley Books, New York) is $15, softcover.