The Book of Lost Friends(125)
In their heyday, the Lost Friends ads, published in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a Methodist newspaper, went out to nearly five hundred preachers, eight hundred post offices, and more than four thousand subscription holders. The column header requested that pastors read the contents from their pulpits to spread the word of those seeking the missing. It also implored those whose searches had ended in success to report back to the newspaper, that the news might be used to encourage others. The Lost Friends advertisements were the equivalent of an ingenious nineteenth-century social media platform, a means of reaching the hinterlands of a divided, troubled, and fractious country still struggling to find itself in the aftermath of war.
I knew that very day, as I took in dozens of the Lost Friends ads, meeting family after family, searcher after searcher, that I had to write the story of a family torn apart by greed, chaos, cruelty, despairing of ever again seeing one another. I knew that the Lost Friends ads would provide hope where hope had long ago been surrendered.
Hannie began speaking to me after I read this ad:
I knew that Hannie’s situation would, in some ways, be directed by the life of Caroline Flowers, who wrote this ad, but that Hannie’s search would lead her to strike off on a quest. Her journey would be life-altering, an odyssey, of sorts. It would change her forever, redirecting her future. For the purposes of Hannie’s age and the particularly lawless, perilous postwar era in Texas, I reimagined history a bit, setting the story in 1875, ten years after the ending of the war. While separated families had been placing ads in various newspapers since the close of the war, distribution of the “Lost Friends” column actually sprang to life in 1877 and continued through the early part of the twentieth century.
I hope you felt the connection to Hannie’s and Benny’s stories as much as I felt the connection to them while writing about them. They are, in my view, the sort of remarkable women who built the legacies we enjoy today. Teachers, mothers, business owners, activists, pioneer farm wives, community leaders who believed, in some large or small way, that they could improve the world for present and future generations. Then they took the risks required to make it happen.
May we all do the same in whatever way we can, in all the places we find ourselves.
And may this book do its part, whatever that part might be.
Notes from the Author About Dialect and Historical Terminology
In a fractured world, sensitivities related to race, economic class, and geographical dialects have justly increased. Modern ears don’t skip casually over words that would have been commonplace a half century ago, or variations in dialect that remain the norm in other parts of the country today. Hopefully that means we’re more aware—but it also puts us in danger of sanitizing what is and what was. As a storyteller, I have tried to respect authentic voices and authentic representations of historical eras.
Wherever possible, I’ve attempted to be faithful to the various dialects of Louisiana and Texas, the narratives left behind by men and women who lived during the historical time period of the story, and the racial and ethnic terminology Hannie would have experienced in her day.
History has much to teach us. That was one of the reasons for the inclusion of the real-life Lost Friends ads in this book. They are the true voices of actual people who lived, and struggled, and who left these small pieces of themselves for posterity. Their history has taught me more than I can ever say, and for those hard-won lessons, I remain eternally grateful.
To Gloria Close, for helping today’s families find safe homes.
To Andy and Diane, and to the dedicated keepers of the Historic New Orleans Collection. Thank you for preserving the history.
To the Lost Friends, wherever you might be.
May your names never go unspoken and your stories forever be told.
Acknowledgments
No story is a solo creation—the scenes sketched, colors added, highlights and shadows dabbed on in solitude. These literary creations start as casual doodles, and they invariably grow outward from there. They become a community project of sorts, a mural with many and diverse contributors who have only one thing in common—they were kind enough to stop by and fill in a blank section or two. The Book of Lost Friends is no exception, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t write the names of a few kind souls on the wall before I go.
To begin with, I’m grateful to the hardworking people behind the Historic New Orleans Collection for creating the invaluable Lost Friends database. You have ensured that the history of a place, an era, and thousands of families is not only preserved but available to the public, researchers, and countless descendants searching for family roots. In particular, thank you to Jessica Dorman, Erin Greenwald, Melissa Carrier, and Andy Forester for your devotion to HNOC, the Lost Friends, and to history itself. To Diane Plauché, what can I say? If you hadn’t brought the Lost Friends to my doorstep, I would never have met them, and Hannie and Benny wouldn’t exist. Thank you for introducing me, for sharing your volunteer work digitizing the ads for the database, and for telling me your family’s story. I will always be grateful to you and Andy for the hours spent together, listening to stories, soaking in the history, studying old documents, talking with Jess and her folks, and walking the quiet cemetery grounds, reading the time-worn markers and wondering what might not be marked. The most surprising thing about these literary journeys is that they bring about new friendships in the real world. I’m honored to count you among them.