The Lost Child

A Mother's Story

By Julie Myerson

For readers of Beautiful Boy and Hurry Down Sunshine, a deeply personal and moving account of two lost children separated by two centuries.

While researching her next book, Julie Myerson finds herself in a graveyard, looking for traces of a young woman who died nearly two centuries before. As a child in Regency England, Mary Yelloly painted an exquisite album of watercolors that uniquely reflected the world in which she lived. But Mary died at the age of twenty-one, and when Julie comes across this album, she is haunted by the potential never realized. She is also reminded of her own child.

Only days earlier, Julie and her husband locked their eldest son out of the family home. He is just seventeen. After a happy childhood, he had discovered drugs, and it had taken only a matter of months for the boy to completely lose his way and propel his family into daily chaos. Julie—whose emotionally fragile relationship with her own father had left her determined to love her children better—had to accept that she was powerless to bring him back.

Honest, warm, and profoundly moving, this is the parallel story of a girl and a boy separated by centuries. The circumstances are very different, but the questions remain terrifyingly the same. What happens when a child disappears from a family? What will survive of any of us in memory or in history? And how is a mother to cope when love is not enough?

Reviews for The Lost Child:

Read an excerpt on Oprah.com from The Lost Child by Julie Myerson, a mother's attempt to understand her drug addict son.

“The Lost Child” is a cry for help and a plea for a clear acknowledgment of the toll this drug is taking on our children.” [It] will appeal to readers of David Sheff’s “Beautiful Boy”…but that’s not enough. These are books for all parents, no matter what shape they think their children are in. Indeed, these books are for anyone interested in public policy relating to drugs. Why would we choose not to see what’s happening all around us? Books like these signal the beginning of awareness. And the beginning of hope that we can do right by our children.”—New York Times Book Review

Read Patti Cohen’s feature on Julie Myerson on the front page of the The New York Times Arts section.

“A surreally touching textual kaleidoscope.”—Publishers Weekly