Finding Lost - Softcover

Sloan, Holly Goldberg

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593530268 ISBN 13: 9780593530269

Verlag: Rocky Pond Books, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

A stray dog leads to major change for Cordy and her grieving family in this heartwarming novel by the beloved author of Counting by 7s.

“It’s impossible to read a book by Holly Goldberg Sloan without coming away wiser, kinder, and happier. She is a singular talent indeed.”—Katherine Applegate, Newbery Medal–winning author of The One and Only Ivan

Cordy Jenkins is searching for something that will change her life, and for the safety that vanished when her father died. She is convinced that if she just tries hard enough, she will find part of what her family lost, which will stop her mom from wanting to leave the small town she and her little brother have always called home. What Cordy finds instead is a muddy, hungry little dog with bad breath. And he's the start of her family's new beginning.

You’ll fall in love with Cordy and her family as they fall in love with the stray pup named Lost. Full of unforgettable moments, family, and warmhearted humor, Finding Lost is a tender story of making peace with the inevitable truth: that change is a constant, and that after profound loss there is still always the possibility of unexpected joy.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Holly Goldberg Sloan (HollyGoldbergSloan.com) is the author of nine previous novels, including the E. B. White Read-Aloud Honor Book Counting by 7s, the New York Times bestseller Short, and the Christopher Award–winning The Elephant in the Room. After graduating from Wellesley College, she worked in commercial production and in her twenties began writing family feature films, including Angels in the Outfield and Made in America. She was the first woman to direct a live action film for the Walt Disney Company when she directed (and wrote) The Big Green. The mother of two sons, she and her husband, Gary Rosen, live in Los Angeles.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1.
It’s always windy here.
I live on the Oregon coast in a one-hundred-year-old wooden building that was supposed to store fishing stuff. At some point, a bathroom was put in. Then later what my mom calls “the worst kitchen in the world” was added. Mom says when she closes her eyes, she smells all the years of salty, slimy fishing nets. I don’t want to break it to her, but you can smell the past in here with your eyes open too.
What we call the boathouse, even if it never held a boat, sits high up the bank five hundred yards from where the Siuslaw River hits the Pacific Ocean. But when we look out the front window, we don’t see water. Our view is of the Big House, which is the fancy place that the McKern family owns. This is their second home and they visit only a few times a year. In August, they always show up for ten days. That’s when Oregon weather can fool a person. It’s warm, but never hot. The rain and cold air go on a short summer vacation and the fog that normally pushes down on my town disappears. People drive up from California and some of them make a big mistake and buy property here. It’s called “buyer’s remorse” when you realize you messed up like that.
Remorse is one of the words people don’t really say very much. Re means “again” in Latin. And morse comes from the Latin “to bite.” So, remorse means to bite again, which could be the pain from something you’d like to change.
I bet the McKerns have remorse, only I’m just guessing.
Mom says we should be grateful that there are people who make popular video games in California and get fooled into thinking a big house on the Oregon coast in the small town of Florence is something they want to own, because it means that we can live at their place.
The McKerns call Mom their property manager. She doesn’t get a salary, but we don’t have to pay rent or any of the utility bills, and when things here break, we can use their credit card to fix them. That’s good because there’s a lot falling apart. One whole category of problems are the doors. The knobs, which are made of old purple glass, look great but they’re always coming off. Besides that, you can only open the oven door partway because it hits the wall. And the refrigerator door is hinged in the wrong direction, so you need to squeeze into the corner to get something out. Also, the roof leaks, which is why we keep buckets on the kitchen counter. I’m used to the sound of the drips. Mom says the slope is wrong and there isn’t good drainage. She must be right, because last April they took off the old roof and started over. But it didn’t fix the problem.
If you have bad drainage, you will always have bad drainage.
We’re supposed to be keeping an eye on the property. I do that by staring through the cloudy front window and wondering why we can’t go into the Big House to watch something on one of the large TVs, or play a game of pool in what’s called the “rec room.” But only Mom is allowed inside. She has a routine where she walks around and checks the windows and doors. Once a day she flushes the toilets. She always turns on a few lights. She picks different ones each day to let people know things aren’t just on timers. Every week she runs the water for two straight minutes in the four showers and the two bathtubs.
Plumbing, I guess like most things, doesn’t do so great left alone.
The McKerns have internet, which we share, only it can be spotty for us in the boathouse. I think we should ask about getting a signal booster, but Mom says we’ve got a good thing going and not to complain. If I want to watch a show on Mom’s computer without a lot of stopping and starting, I go sit on the Big House back deck, which looks out onto the water. It doesn’t matter what time of year, I always wear my heavy coat and a knit hat and I bring a blanket. But even if it’s raining (which it is most days), the overhang of the roof keeps me dry.
It’s loud under the alcove. The wind comes across the sand dunes on the other side of the water and blows hard. It’s like a whistle. And there’s also the roaring sound of the river and the crashing of the ocean waves. The noise of rain hitting the deck of the Big House blends into the drops pinging on the Siuslaw. A drizzle on water can be louder than heavy rainfall, which doesn’t seem right but has something to do with bubbles that break on the river’s surface from the smaller drops. I’m not any kind of scientist, but I pay attention to things.

We didn’t always live here.
Two years and four months ago we were renting a house on Buckskin Bob Road, which sounds like a joke but was the name of my old street. It was in Dunes City, just south of Florence. We were only two blocks from Siltcoos Lake. Our house was light yellow with blue trim, and our roof didn’t leak. The rental had three bedrooms and there was a fenced-in backyard, which was to keep out the deer. There was old wall-to-wall carpeting that felt soft on my bare feet. We had a washer and dryer in the garage and an island in the kitchen. Mom says she never thought a kitchen island was important until we didn’t have one.
Two years and four and a half months ago my little brother, Geno, and I also had a dad. But on April 4, very early in the morning, there was The Accident, which is what we call what happened. If Dad hadn’t been on his boat in the dark pulling up crab pots, he wouldn’t have hit the sand bar, which cracked the hull of the boat, and the sneaker wave wouldn’t have knocked him into the freezing water.
And everything in the world would be different.

My dad was a commercial crab fisherman, which is why his hands had a lot of calluses. He grew up in this part of Oregon and he was carrying on his family’s tradition, even though his parents had moved away. Dad’s mother and father got divorced when he was little and his mom moved to Alaska after he finished high school. He was an only child. Pop-Pop, my grandfather, turned the crabbing business over to Dad once he thought he was ready. After that, Pop-Pop got rid of his stuff, gave Dad his truck, and rode off on a motorcycle that had a lot of chrome. I was little and didn’t understand. I guess I still don’t. I remember Pop-Pop, but I guess what I’m remembering are pictures I’ve seen, not the real person. Mom wasn’t able to find Pop-Pop to tell him about The Accident. Sometimes I think that’s better because for Pop-Pop, Dad is still alive (even though I wonder how close they really were—it’s not like he’s been checking in on any of us).
Mom didn’t grow up here. Her family is from Coos Bay, which is also on the coast but an hour’s drive south. They weren’t water people. They worked driving logging trucks. But none of them are in Coos Bay anymore. One of Mom’s brothers, Caleb, moved up to Spokane, Washington, and Uncle Mike and his wife split up and he lives in Texas now. After her brothers left, Mom’s parents bought a used RV and they started traveling around, mostly in Arizona. Mom says that when you get older you can only take so much sadness and you don’t think your heart will hold out if you hear any more bad news. I don’t know if that’s what happened, but they didn’t come back after The Accident. They told Mom to move us to Arizona. Grandma Carol said they weren’t going to spend another minute being “rainy-day people.” It’s too bad because my little brother and I could use a grandma and grandpa or some aunts, uncles, and cousins.

After The Accident we put Dad’s ashes in the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Rocky Pond Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593530268
• ISBN 13: 9780593530269
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 208
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Libri GmbH; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; Hessen; Deutschland