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    The Lost Girls: A Novel
    The Lost Girls: A Novel
    The Lost Girls: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Lost Girls: A Novel

    Written by Heather Young

    Narrated by Alice Rosengard and Laurel Schroeder

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    A stunning debut novel that examines the price of loyalty, the burden of regret, the meaning of salvation, and the sacrifices we make for those we love, told in the voices of two unforgettable women linked by a decades-old family mystery at a picturesque lake house.

    In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family—her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child.

    Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine. For Justine, the lake house offers freedom and stability—a way to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the home she never had. But the long Minnesota winter is just beginning. The house is cold and dilapidated. The dark, silent lake is isolated and eerie. Her only neighbor is a strange old man who seems to know more about the summer of 1935 than he’s telling.

    Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives to steal her inheritance, and the man she left launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house haunted by the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJul 26, 2016
    ISBN9780062472687
    Author

    Heather Young

    Heather Young earned her law degree from the University of Virginia and practiced law in San Francisco before beginning her writing career. She received an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars, and has studied at the Tin House Writers’ Workshop and the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. She lives in Mill Valley, California, with her husband and two children. The Lost Girls is her first novel.

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    Reviews for The Lost Girls

    4/5

    207 ratings43 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Good info on this crime. Good background info on the women killed. Gets a little bogged down in their lives but all and all very well done. Keeps you reading.
    • 3/5
      It was a little slow and drawn out but turned out to be very good
    • 4/5
      Drawn out at times a bit much but a good read with some twists at the end.
    • 4/5
      Why are we drawn to true crime sagas? Is it the voyeur in us, the "there but for the grace of..."? For me, both, and for this book, I grew up about ten miles away from this sad dumping ground for murdered female escorts.Robert Kolker is such a compassionate writer. This book is a true eulogy for five women who came of age in the new area of Craigslist escort services. Common to all is the sad realization that all were born to and parented by very flawed people who should have found something less damaging to do with their lives and time. Very worth a read and I think if this author would do readings at high schools and colleges, some women might not set their feet on the same doom-laden paths.
    • 2/5
      This audio book turned into background noise pretty quickly. I don't want to bely the tragedy of the deaths, but I had a difficult time keeping the five women's stories and families straight in my head.
    • 5/5
      This book should be used in classes on how to write true crime -- tour de force reporting and excellent writing. It's especially impressive since, as the subtitle clearly states, the case remains unsolved. Kolker is candid but compassionate about the lives of the women and how they came to work as escorts -- aka prostitutes -- using Craigslist to connect with clients and, eventually, the person (or persons) who killed them and dumped their bodies on a desolate stretch of Long Island highway. It's heartbreaking to realize that these women come from working class backgrounds where financial and thus family stability was totally undermined by the disappearance of solid jobs in places like Buffalo and Groton. And it's heartbreaking, too, to hear how police blew off the missing person reports on these women once they heard how they earned their money.
    • 3/5
      Don’t expect too much. LOST GIRLS has received so many great reviews, even a NEW YORK TIMES notable book award for 2013, I expected to be mesmerized. Don’t make the same mistake. Then you’ll more readily see what outstanding reporting Robert Kolker does with this book.Not only does Kolker investigate the mysterious deaths of five young prostitutes on Long Island, he also looks at their lives, how they grew up, who loved them, how they chose their “profession.” He provides so many details you might come to understand them. I almost did.My biggest problems with LOST GIRLS were a) too many names and b) too many details. I just couldn’t keep track of all of them.Because LOST GIRLS is nonfiction, all the names are necessary for accurate storytelling. A good reporter is accurate, above all. Fiction can concentrate more on keeping the story readable with fewer names and fewer people who share the same name. But, with LOST GIRLS, at first I was paging back to remind myself who belonged in which girl’s life. Eventually, though, I gave up. Same with all the details. They may be necessary, but I had a hard time remembering which belong with which story, and I eventually gave up.It would have been an enormous help to have a list of names, with reminders of who is who. Then guess what I found at the end of the book: a list of names, with reminders of who is who. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT DOING AT THE END? So, while I admire Kolker’s investigative reporting, as a book, I can’t give it a high rating. At this length, it is too confusing.
    • 3/5
      Not impressed with narrator. Monotone for hours at a time. Main character annoying. Dialogue boring. Book might be better.
    • 3/5
      The unsolved mystery of the deaths of five prostitutes who used the web to advertise. This took place in Long Island. I found the girls' history to be very detailed, but even more thorough was the investigation into the one missing girl which uncovered four other girls' bodies. I don't think I would recommend this to anyone unless they had an interest in the geographical area in which it happened.
    • 5/5
      Once you're able to easily distinguish the narratives of the individual girls, whose lives are unique except for their shared lower income background and their foray into the world of prostitution via the growing popularity of Craigslist, then the whole tragedy of Lost Girls comes into heartbreaking focus.The book is better than the Netflix production, and the Netflix one is brilliant. That's how good the book is.
    • 5/5
      Well researched, written with compassion for the victims and their families.
    • 5/5
      I found Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery to be a riveting story that was both informative and well written. The sad fact is that these women, who turned up as victims of a serial killer, were already lost before their bodies turned up in shallow graves on Long Island. What they all had in common, other than their work as prostitutes was their complicated and difficult lives. This case is another example of how, once they were reported as missing, the fact of their working in the sex trade, made it easy for authorities to dismiss and at times outright ignore their case.It was only once the bodies began turning up that the case received attention from both the police and the media. Although ultimately more than 10 bodies were discovered along the roadside, it was five women who were linked together in this book, all five had worked as call girls through Craig’s List on the internet. Four of the women were found buried in shallow graves at the side of the road and the fifth was eventually found in a nearby marsh. What Robert Kolker does in Lost Girls is to humanize these women and their stories. The killer of these women has not been identified, and as the years pass by, the feeling is that he or they will never be found. Although the families did recover their loved ones bodies, true closure is impossible as long as no one is to be held accountable. This book stands as a monument for these women who suffered abuse and neglect as children and then paid the ultimate penalty for the bad choices they made as they became adults.
    • 3/5
      I wanted to like this book because I was mesmerized by the NetFlix movie of the same name. Based on the true crime story of young women who were found murdered in Long Island, NY. from 1996 - current. Still unsolved, the writer notes that the police were slow to arrive at the scene when a 911 call asked for help, with the statement that she was going to be killed.The movie was clearer and more straightforward in noting that the girls were hookers, and some of them were also addicted to drugs. In trying to solve the crimes, certain people of the area were not investigated, whereas others seemed to be spot on as the potential killer.The writer seemed to ramble and it was very difficult to keep track of the history of each murdered girl.See the movie, and if you like a book cluttered with too much detail, then read the book as well.
    • 5/5
      It's difficult to write about serial killers without abstracting the story into poles of dark and light. Serial killers lend themselves to torture porn, flat reportage, and academic treatises. We devour these stories. Their names are famous, their deeds infamous, and their victims - anonymous. In Green River, Running Red, Anne Rule writes about the Green River Killer, except she doesn't - instead, she writes about his victims. We come to the story through their stories and it is a powerful experience. Robert Kolker achieves something similar in Lost Girls, the story of five of the victims of an as-yet unidentified serial killer (or killers) who is at least dumping bodies in a desolate stretch of Long Island. Told from the point of view of the victims and their families, Mr. Kolker unearths not just a mystery, but a story of economic hard times, of family, and of the way we assign value to victims.The Internet has changed prostitution in some fundamental ways. Advertising on Craigslist (when you still could) or Backpages or other websites that take adult ads removes the street and, in some cases, pimps from the equation. It allows people who might not have become sex workers easy entry into the field. Get a room, post a picture with a phone number, schedule the appointments, walk away with better money than you can get from most jobs (minimum wage work, anyone?). On the flip side, when you take away the street, you take away the buffer - on the street you have a moment to size up the customer, to at least pretend to yourself that you can get a feel for them, that you can more easily walk away. Talk to a customer for five minutes on the phone and they're on your doorstep in moments. There is no crowd to see, little protection, plenty of risk.Mr. Kolker tells a good story, writing of the lives of these young women and their families before and after their disappearances. He tells the story of law enforcement and societal indifference and slut shaming. He speaks of real people, forever changed by their encounters with someone who took indifference to its logical conclusion. He does not tell the story of their unknown killer(s), but they're there in the shadows and in the judgments we make about others. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I was really only able to get into this book after reading about a fourth of it. Maybe it was the back and forth with the time periods, but it took a little bit for the characters to make sense and connect, but once they did I was hooked. I was a little bit surprised with the ending, although it was not a total shocker. I had suspected the parties involved a few times throughout the story.
    • 5/5
      The Lost Girls is a very well-written historical fiction teeming with mysteries and suspense that keep one on edge of one’s seat. Undeniably, this is Heather Young’s triumphant debut. The story is weaved back and forth between Justine who has inherited the family summer lake house from her grand-aunt and Lucy, the grand-aunt. It is a story of lost girls, literally and figuratively, that has spanned through decades of generation of a family. The family’s secrets are revealed gradually as the story goes on. Each girl in that family, from Lucy (the reat grand-aunt) to Melanie (Justine’s teenage daughter, Lucy’s great grand-niece), has her own struggle to deal with, and just get lost at some point. Nonetheless, one would find hope and move on with one’s life for good.I am able to enjoy this story thanks to my best friend, Ms K.P. who introduces the book to me.
    • 4/5
      This book moves in a slow yet intriguing way, switching between the voice of Lucy and that of Justine. Both of these women are so similar in their thinking and way of behaving, and yet they retain their separate identities. The story itself is tragic and unfolds beautifully, capturing one's attention from the very beginning and holding it until the very end. While the disappearance of the child is what brought me to this book in the first place, it was the tale of growing up, learning to love, and exploring life itself that kept me here. If you are looking for a good historical fiction that explores the lives of 5 generations of women, then this would be a great place to start!
    • 5/5
      A multi generational story about one literally lost girl and several figuratively lost girls. What they have in common is that they all are from the same family spanning three generations all with ties to the same home located in rural Minnesota. The central mystery revolves around the disappearance of the youngest of three sisters in the first generation in 1935. The girl was never found. Fast forward to the present when a woman and and her two daughters (family) end up unraveling the mystery. Well developed characters with a captivating plot.
    • 5/5
      Excellent Read! Has left me somewhat numb. It was an engaging mystery, and laid out beautifully. Each character came to life. The story is told between 2 timelines. The present Justine, single mother of 2 daughters.Her own mother (Maurie), was also a single mother still searching for the perfect man or next husband protector and the the other story Lucy. Lucy, Justine's great aunt's journal. Written to Justine whom she leaves the summer house on the lake where Maurie was born and raised. Lucy's Journal is the confession of the last summer at the lake where her baby sister goes missing, where she and her older sister Lilith, keep a secret that changes the path of their lives. Heather Young unfolds the backdrop of this story that stabs the heart in the knowing of the unspoken words. A page turner til the end. Not knowing, yet knowing, the truth and leaving a numb feeling of their regrets with the hope of a happier life for those left at the Miller Lodge on the glistening lake and the faded yellow house that left so many secrets. I am giving this book 5 stars as it deserves it! As does the Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel!
    • 4/5
      Dual timeline stories are my favorite. When done well, they are exceptional. Historical with present. Present with past curiosity. Author Heather Young has painted a creative story with purpose of keeping the reader guessing while slowly unfurling pieces to keep you engaged. Peppered with mystery, grappling with family secrets, an edge of psychological suspense, and the long-term rippled effects seen readily in the present. Heather pulls it all off so well. I feel the author expertly balances the line between harrowing mystery, life, family, and self revelations so deeply moving. In the end, you are a better person that I to have the willpower to put this down. It cannot be done. I highly recommend this and look forward to more from this author in the future.Many thanks to Library Thing's Early Reviewers for this publication in lieu of an honest review.
    • 4/5
      Lucy spent her childhood summers with her parents and two sisters. Sixty plus years later she recounts in an old notebook the disappearance of her six year old sister, Emily, at the end of one of those summers. She knows that time is short and she wills the lake house and her estate along with the notebook to her great niece, Justine.Justine only spent one summer at this house when she was nine. The inheritance of the house is a lifeline for her. She decides to pack up her two daughters and all of their possessions into her car, leaving a bad situation in San Diego behind for a fresh start at the remote Minnesota house in the middle of winter. The story goes back and forth from the past to the present letting us learn about how the loss of Emily so long ago affected their family through generation after generation. I enjoyed reading this book.
    • 4/5
      The first half of this book moved along at a rather slow pace. I had gotten the impression that the disappearance of the youngest sister (back in 1935) was the central theme, and it didn't appear to be the case during the first part - but WOW, the author really tied it all up together in an emotional, gut-punching way at the end. The story is told by Great-Aunt Lucy (via her diary) about her family (sisters Lilith and Emily and horribly dysfunctional parents) and then carried on in the present by Justine (great-niece of Lucy and heir to her estate) about her family (mother Maurie, daughters Melanie and Angela, and boyfriend Patrick). The Miller family (Abe and Matthew) are also present for all of this and play vastly important roles. There are lots of female characters to keep track of here, but it proves to be worthwhile. I cried during the last two chapters of this book, something that I rarely do while reading. Deeply moving and highly recommended!
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book! I don't know if I can review it without going into a lot of detail, so I'll try to keep it very basic if I can:This is the story of a family with three daughters and the youngest one goes missing. The rest of the book is about how her absence affects the family. But, how the youngest sister goes missing is not a major part of the story until almost the end. Just the effect of her being gone is the major theme: how it affects the dad, mom, the two older sisters, and some of the community.Now, the other interesting part is that the whole book is told by two different people: one part is told in first person by one of the older sisters starting back in the 1930's during the summer that the whole "missing sister" mystery began. The other story is told in the present by the granddaughter of the other older sister in third person! Are you confused yet?! I thought I was going to be, but as soon as I figured out who was telling which part of the story, I really liked both stories equally, and they both held my attention. I will say that it was not really fast-paced until you start to get about three-fourths of the way through, then I couldn't put it down! Because there are two stories going simultaneously, there are two pretty big climaxes that happen, one after the other. I really did like this story and the author's writing style a lot, and would definitely read other books that she writes!
    • 4/5
      In a small enclave of houses on a remote Minnesota lake, Lucy spent her childhood summers with her parents and two sisters. Sixty plus years later she recounts in an old composition notebook the sad tale of the disappearance of her six year old sister at the end of one of those summers. She wills the lake house and most of her estate along with the family story to her great niece, Justine, "the only one to whom the past might matter". Justine also spent a childhood summer at this house. The inheritance of the house is a lifeline for her. She makes a quick decision to pack her two daughters and all of their possessions into a car, hoping to leave a bad situation in San Diego behind for a fresh start at the remote Minnesota house on the iced-over lake. Chapters alternate in a dual narrative that spans the years from 1935 to the present, including the stories of five generations of women all of whom are at least a little flawed and not entirely likable. The author has a deft hand at descriptive writing, e.g., their San Diego apartment "was worn and poor and stank of striving and failing and overcooked brussels sprouts." Compelling from the beginning, there are subtly ominous undercurrents that keep up the tension as details are parceled out. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book quite a bit. I am not always a fan of books that feature dual timelines but this one worked really well for me. I ended up liking both of the timelines equally and thought that Lucy and Justine both had an interesting story to tell. This story was really focused on the characters with the plot building slowly. I found myself really invested in this group of characters by the close of the book.This book focuses on Justine and Lucy. When Lucy died, she left everything to her grandniece, Justine. Justine has two little girls and lives with her boyfriend in California but feels something missing in her life. When Justine inherits Lucy's lake house in Minnesota, she takes her girls and moves there in order to get a fresh start. The transition isn't as easy as Justine expects it to be.Lucy has her own story to tell and decides to write everything down before her death. When Lucy was a child, her younger sister, Emily, disappeared from the lake house and has never been found. Lucy's story tells everything that happened during the summer leading up to Emily's disappearance. Emily's disappearance was heartbreaking and shaped the lives of Lucy and her family.This book really showed how one event can impact a family for generations. Emily's sisters never really moved on with thier life after she disappeared. I liked watching Justine learn to take care of herself and really decide on what she wanted for herself and her girls. It takes a lot for her to learn to stand up for herself but I have a lot of hope for her by the end of the book.I would recommend this book to others. It was a book that gave me hope and broke my heart all at the same time. The slower pace was a nice change and I thought it really gave me a chance to connect with the characters. I enjoyed Heather Young's debut novel and look forward to reading more from this author in the future.I won a copy of this book from William Morrow via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
    • 4/5
      Less a tale of suspense and more a portrait of a man with a crumbling psyche thanks to secrets in his past. An atmospheric story about small towns, the lies we tell ourselves and each other.
    • 5/5
      Wow!It has been a long time since I picked up a book that I read straight through the night and I was invested in the characters deeply enough to cry at the end. And to think this was the author’s first book!"I found this notebook in the desk yesterday…It was as though it had lain in wait…until now … sixty-four years [later]. Since Lilith’s passing…the story of that summer has been mine alone, to keep or to share. I am the last…I hold secrets that don’t belong to me…Better to let it be, I tell myself…But this notebook reminds me that it’s not so simple as that…So I will write my family’s story, here in this book … I will tell it as fully as I can, even the parts that grieve me…Lucy Evans"Lucy Evans’ great-grandfather, leaving the coal mines of Wales, arrived in America, and improved his status eventually co-founding Williamsburg, Minnesota. The Lost Girls covers five generations of women in this prominent family. Lucy’s family, along with six other Williamsburg families, owned a summer retreat on a remote lake. A local mixed-race family owned a restaurant and lodge that was central to the social life of the lake residents. In the fall of 1935, as the temporary residents on the lake prepare to head back to town in advance of the harsh Minnesota winter, Lucy’s six-year old sister, Emily, disappears in the dead of night. Lucy’s distraught and overprotective mother never returns to Williamsburg and she, along with the two remaining sisters, stay at the lake- always leaving the light on for Emily.Sixty-four years later, Lucy, the last of the Thomas Evans family still lives at the lake, and knowing she will soon be gone, decides it’s time to tell her family’s story…warts and all. Lucy leaves the Evans estate to her grandniece, Justine, along with the notebook revealing all the family’s dirty secrets.The book alternates from Lucy’s first person narration with the third person narrator focusing on the life of Lucy’s grandniece, Justine after Lucy’s death. As Lucy shares her story we begin to see how the sins of the past generations have deeply scarred Justine’s life in the present.Lucy’s story is so compelling that Justine’s story seems weak at first but as the book progresses Justine’s family issues become as important as the search for the truth about Emily’s disappearance. As the two stories converge, putting the book down is nearly impossible!The novel is emotionally hard at times. The isolation, loneliness and emotional distress of each character is palpable. Both Lucy and Justine’s family secrets are slowly revealed but you can still feel them viscerally just below the surface from beginning to end. Would the story have changed if each succeeding generation not borne only girls? What draws each of the girls to a toxic spouse? Is there a way to save Justine and her girls?The book is so well written that it is hard to believe it’s the author’s first work of fiction! The descriptions of the lake and the woods make you feel as though you are witnessing things through three-D glasses. Lucy’s penchant for writing children’s books about Emily are works of art in themselves. There are so many layers to this book but the reader never gets lost in the story; just hungry to know more…Love, loyalty, friendship and family bonds are tested and the conclusion of the book will leave you stunned.I want to thank Heather Young, WM Morrow Publishers and Edelweiss for both hardcover and e-reader advance copies In exchange for my honest review.Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of two generations of lost girls. Sisters Lucy and Lillian spent every summer at a Minnesota lake until 1935; then on the last day of their family's vacation, their six year old sister disappears, never to be found again. It is assumed that she ran away.Sixty four years later, shortly before Lucy's death, she decides to write an account of that summer to her great niece Justine. Justine and her two daughters are trying to escape Justine's controlling boyfriend, and are just as lost as Lucy and Lillian were many years earlier. Justine inherits Lucy's house, which is the same one the family had used as a summer home--but now it is winter. Dark secrets threaten to emerge as both of these stories are told in alternating chapters. This is a great novel about family love, loyalty, and regret. Young is an author to watch.
    • 4/5
      Impressive debut! What really happened to six-year-old Emily that summer in 1935? Quiet suspense, dark family secrets, and a remote Minnesota lake house combine for a haunting, atmospheric tale. {Borrowed from the library.}
    • 3/5
      I received this book from LibraryThing and am thankful to be selected to read it. I found it hard to keep up with the switching back and forth between the leading characters--Lucy and Justine. I would not recommend this as a "Good" book to read.