Once Was Lost

Once Was Lost
By Sara Zarr
Little, Brown, 2009. 217 pgs. Young Adult

Sam is a pastor’s kid and it bothers her at times. Even her good friends don’t invite her to certain parties for fear of what she will tell her dad. So how does she tell anyone that she is not sure she believes anymore? She can’t tell her emotionally-absent father who is always doing church work and her mother is an alcoholic in rehab. Sam keeps all this to herself, along with her frustrations towards her parents. Sam’s doubts increase when a thirteen-year-old girl from her congregation, Jody, is kidnapped after church.

I vaguely remember what it was like being a teenager, but I don’t know if I would have kept all these doubts bottled up in myself like Sam does. That was my biggest frustration with this book, and perhaps the point of it—Sam never tells anyone, not even the boy she becomes closer to, that she has some doubts. I would have exploded. But perhaps this book will help the doubting soul who keeps everything inside.

MN