Fifteen years ago, Jeremy and Ralph disappeared while on an end of the school year field trip to Red Crow State Forest in West Virginia. One moment, they were there, and then they were gone. The forest was repeatedly searched, but no signs of the boys were ever found. And then, six months later, they were discovered walking out of the forest by a pair of hikers. Ralph had been badly hurt, and Jeremy was carrying him. Medical treatment was summoned, and both boys were hospitalized and examined. Jeremy was in perfect health. Ralph had a series of long-healed scars on his back. Both boys claimed to have no memory of where they had been or how they had survived for six months in a forest that had been thoroughly searched for them.

Over the course of the next fifteen years, Ralph spent time in and out of hospitals, some medical and some mental. He never recovered his memories of what happened during those six months.

Jeremy made a full recovery and quickly developed a reputation for locating lost items and people. He has a perfect record. It doesn’t seem to matter if the item is large or small or if the person is living or dead; if they are lost, not hiding but lost, Jeremy can find them.

Once inseparable, the friends have not spoken in fifteen years. Ralph knows that Jeremy has not told him things about the time they were missing. Jeremy knows this is true, but he also knows he cannot tell Ralph what he knows.

Emilie has felt lost since her mother died. She knows she was adopted, but it doesn’t matter; her mother was her mother, and now she is gone, and Emelie thought she had no other family in the world. Until she discovered, after a DNA test, that she, in fact, had a sister. Twenty years ago, her sister was kidnapped by a sexual predator when Emilie was a toddler. While the kidnapper’s body was found shortly after the crime was committed, Emilie’s sister was never found. Now, Emilie is on a mission to find her sister. She was kidnapped and has been lost for two decades. And Emilie knows that if Jeremy will help her, he can find her.

Jeremy ultimately agrees to help Emelie, but he warns her it will not be easy on either of them. In fact, it will be harder on Jeremy because, to help Emelie, he will need the help of the one person he doesn’t want to contact: Ralph.

Meg Shaffer, the author of last year’s marvelous The Wishing Game, is back with another masterful blend of the fanciful and the perilous, acknowledging how one rarely exists without the other.

Shaffer has again filled her novel with memorable characters. They have each faced challenges. Neither Jeremy nor Ralph have truly recovered from their disappearance years ago. And, as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Emelie’s missing sister is inextricably tied to the two men, binding the three together on the quest to find her.

The Lost Story is a self-described modern-day fairy tale, relying on tropes that are tried and true while also subverting and challenging them. Shaffer also illustrates how art and creation can be therapeutic in working through trauma and grief. Finally, she highlights how even the smallest gesture at the right time, to the right person, can be life-altering.

Through all of this, Shaffer emphasizes the need for hope. The hope that things can, and will, develop as they should. That one can find, or create, the family that they need.