Opening
Two timelines narrow toward a shared heartbeat of memory and longing. In 1875, Hannie Gossett stumbles from survival into purpose when a hidden church and old newspapers awaken her search for kin. In 1987, Benedetta "Benny" Silva uncovers records that expose a town’s buried past—and the risks of resurrecting it.
What Happens
Chapter 11: Hannie Gossett—Louisiana, 1875
Thrown into the river, Hannie claws to shore, gutted by the loss of her grandmother’s beads—her last tangible thread to family. While tracking the steamboat men who’ve collected Ginger and Juneau Jane’s gray, she hides, watches, and follows, driven by instinct and anger. The swamp drains her, and she collapses.
A mangy, tender dog rouses her and leads her to a secluded, rotting cabin. In the barn, Hannie finds the horses and two emptied trunks that stink of chemicals. Behind a false wall, she discovers a cramped “poacher’s hold” fitted with slave chains—space designed for stolen people. Inside lie Lavinia Gossett and Juneau Jane LaPlanche, drugged and limp. Hannie, fueled by terror and grit, slings the girls belly-down over the horses, frees the captors’ mule, and slips into the swamp’s cover. The dog follows.
Chapter 12: Benny Silva—Augustine, Louisiana, 1987
Exploring the cavernous Gossett house, Benny spots her truant student, LaJuna Carter, emerging from a pantry cabinet. LaJuna reveals a secret floor hatch from an old dumbwaiter system that once kept enslaved kitchen workers out of sight. Drawing on stories from her Great-Aunt Dicey—the Gossetts’ longtime housekeeper—LaJuna sketches out the home’s tragedies, its supposed curse, and the town’s long memory, aligning with The Power of Stories and History.
Benny bargains: come to school and help sift the mansion’s library for classroom books. LaJuna agrees, but on strict terms—no interference with her life, no exposure of their arrangement, and no “friend” label at school. As they work, LaJuna’s command of local lore and hidden spaces marks her as a keeper of community memory—and Benny’s quiet guide deeper into Augustine’s past.
Chapter 13: Hannie Gossett—Louisiana, 1875
Hannie leads the horses through a night of predators and phantoms, terrified of both the swamp and the men who might be behind her. After Ginger stumbles, she halts in a clearing and makes camp. The girls won’t swallow water; Hannie realizes they’re poisoned. Rain arrives hard the next day, turning ground to slurry and paths to riddles.
At the edge of collapse, Hannie finds a hidden track and a small, low-roofed building: a praise house—an outlaw sanctuary of worship built by enslaved people in the woods. She shelters the girls and the animals, stokes a stove, and fights her own fever. The praise house stands as a quiet emblem of Resilience and Hope Amidst Adversity, holding body and spirit together when the world tries to tear them apart.
Chapter 14: Benny Silva—Augustine, Louisiana, 1987
LaJuna produces a package she once tucked away for the late judge: a Gossett family Bible and a plantation ledger. The Bible’s “Family Record” doesn’t track Gossetts; it records the people they enslaved—names, births, deaths—and includes a map of the unmarked cemetery. The ledger uses stark codes: L for “lost,” E for “emancipated,” S for “stayed as sharecropper.” Benny recognizes the map as the overgrown orchard behind her rental.
LaJuna vanishes for days. Benny searches the orchard and touches the unmarked graves, then looks for LaJuna at Aunt Sarge’s. Sarge explains LaJuna’s burdened home life and issues a warning: avoid the Gossett archives and the two powerful uncles, Will and Manford. Pursuing the past could cost Benny her job and LaJuna’s mother hers. Even so, Benny refuses to back away—only to find Sarge waiting on her porch that night, a living warning planted at Benny’s doorstep.
Chapter 15: Hannie Gossett—Louisiana, 1875
Days pass in the praise house. Juneau Jane stirs; Lavinia barely rouses. When Hannie urges they move, Juneau Jane fixates on newspaper pages pasted to the walls for insulation: the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a church paper carrying the “Lost Friends” column—ads placed by people searching for family sundered by slavery and war.
Illiterate but electrified, Hannie refuses to leave until Juneau Jane reads every ad aloud. The words slice and heal at once, igniting Hannie’s own longing and anchoring her Search for Family and Identity. Knowing the danger, Juneau Jane tears the pages down to carry the stories with them. On the trail, she cuts her hair and declares she’ll go to Texas to find her father—and she won’t return home. Hannie, whose people were taken west, chooses to go too, even as they face the fraught question of what to do with the still-weak Lavinia.
Key Events
- Hannie tracks the kidnappers to a hidden cabin, rescues drugged Juneau Jane and Lavinia, and escapes into the swamp with a stray dog’s help.
- Benny discovers LaJuna’s secret knowledge of the Gossett house, including concealed passages and family lore.
- Hannie shelters in a clandestine praise house, where faith and survival interlock.
- LaJuna unveils the Gossett Bible and ledger documenting enslaved families and a map to the unmarked cemetery behind Benny’s home.
- In the praise house, Hannie and Juneau Jane find the “Lost Friends” ads and carry them off the walls.
- Juneau Jane and Hannie choose Texas and the perilous hope of reunion.
Character Development
Hannie shifts from survival to quest. Benny moves from overwhelmed teacher to reluctant archivist. Juneau Jane wakes into agency. LaJuna steps forward as a guardian of communal memory.
- Hannie Gossett:
- Lets go of her last relic (the beads) and embraces a living mission: finding family.
- Engineers a daring rescue and navigates the swamp, revealing tactical courage and compassion.
- Claims the “Lost Friends” as a map for her own future.
- Benedetta "Benny" Silva:
- Recognizes the classroom’s limits and turns to archives and place-based history.
- Confronts the moral stakes of truth-telling in a town policed by power.
- Accepts risk to protect students and the integrity of the record.
- Juneau Jane LaPlanche:
- Moves from captive to collaborator and navigator through literacy.
- Cuts her hair and charts Texas as her destination—self-definition over inheritance.
- Becomes the voice that unlocks the printed past for Hannie.
- LaJuna Carter:
- Balances caretaking at home with clandestine scholarship in the mansion.
- Sets boundaries and terms, asserting autonomy even as a student.
- Acts as conduit between oral tradition and written archives.
Themes & Symbols
Stories as power and proof: The ledger, Bible, and “Lost Friends” ads confront each other—oppressor records that reduce people to entries versus self-authored notices that insist on names, kinship, and hope. In both timelines, characters turn to documents not as artifacts but as living instruments to correct the record.
Family and identity as compass: Hannie’s grief over the lost beads transforms into a purpose anchored in kinship. Juneau Jane’s turn toward Texas reveals identity as chosen lineage as much as blood. Benny’s work threads community identity to land, graves, and pages—belonging measured by what is remembered and tended.
Resilience housed in sacred spaces: The praise house shelters bodies and rekindles purpose, a sanctuary born from oppression that now incubates resistance. In Augustine, LaJuna’s oral histories and Sarge’s warnings function as cultural praise houses—places where truth survives under pressure.
Symbols
- The “Lost Friends” column: Fragmentation and reunion in print—loss named, hope enacted.
- The Gossett ledger and Bible: Dual archives—dehumanization recorded; humanity recovered.
- The unmarked cemetery: Erased lives demanding recognition; history rooted in soil.
- The praise house: Communal faith, secrecy, and safety forged into endurance.
- The beads (lost): Broken lineage that catalyzes a new, active search.
Key Quotes
“Family Record”
- The Bible’s section centers enslaved people’s births and deaths, subverting expectations about who counts as “family.” It reframes the plantation archive as a ledger of belonging, not merely ownership.
“Lost Friends”
- This column crystallizes the novel’s emotional engine: names reaching across distance and time. For Hannie, hearing these notices turns grief into direction.
“poacher’s hold”
- The hidden room’s name exposes kidnapping as an economy and a practice, not an anomaly. Its chains literalize how secrecy and violence sustain systems of control.
Codes “L,” “E,” “S”
- The ledger’s shorthand—“lost,” “emancipated,” “stayed as sharecropper”—compresses human lives into letters. Decoding them expands those lives back into stories and consequences that ripple into 1987.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters pivot the novel from escape to pursuit: Hannie moves toward reunion, not just away from danger. The “Lost Friends” column gives the book its title and heart, turning scattered pain into a shared project of finding and being found. In Augustine, the discovery of the Bible and ledger stitches Benny’s classroom to the land and its graves, forcing a reckoning with who controls the story—and who pays when truth surfaces. Together, the timelines illuminate how remembrance becomes action, and how archives—hidden, fragile, contested—carry the power to restore names, families, and futures.