Publication Date: July 16, 2024
Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.
As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.
Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.
Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.
Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.
Two teen boys vanish during a field trip to Red Crow State Forest in May and reappear six months later. Fast-forward 15 years, and their shared experience holds the keys to an investigation into a missing person.
The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer provides an adult fantasy adventure along the lines of The Chronicles of Narnia mixed with Lord of the Flies. Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell walked into the forest as best friends, but when they emerged, Rafe had no memories of where they had been.
The two went their separate ways, with Rafe becoming somewhat of an artistic hermit while Jeremy specialized in locating missing females. When Emilie Wendell approaches Jeremy for assistance finding her kidnapped half-sister, he claims to have seen her during the time he and Rafe were lost.
When the trio enters the forest, the impossible suddenly becomes possible as a new world emerges. Within its confines, Jeremy and Rafe must unpack secrets from the past before they can move forward.
Packed with whimsy and a storyteller who pops in every few chapters to offer perspective, the book offers a unique reading experience.
The Lost Story delivers a tale featuring a magical realm and the two men who bravely return and uncover past secrets.
Meg Shaffer is the USA Today bestselling author of The Lost Story and The Wishing Game, which was a Book of the Month finalist for Book of the Year, a Reader’s Digest and Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and has been translated into 21 languages. Meg holds an MFA in TV and Screenwriting from Stephens College. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and two cats. The cats are not writers.
