Rating: 
Summary: The Lost Girls, Found
Review: Lee Smith is a renowned Southern writer, winner of the 1999 Academy Award for Fiction. "The Lost Girls" is the first novel of hers that I have read. It is a story well told but sometimes too cliche. Twists and Turns abound, but no real surprises.Five classmates from a Blue Ridge Mountain college take a homemade raft trip down the Mississippi. 35 years later these same women meet again for a steamboat ride down the Mississippi following the same trek. This time the boat trip is not for fun but to bury one of the classmates, Baby. Margaret Ballou, nee Baby was the trouble maker/finder of the group. She was beautiful and winful. She once said she made love after every funeral she ever attended and she loved funerals. It is unclear if Baby drove off the bridge intentionally in her small town in Mississippi or if she lost control of her car. She had many instances of "breakdowns" in her her years. She had several marriages and alcohol and drugs played a big part in her life. Saying that, everyone loved Baby, everyone wanted to be her friend. But Baby picked her friends carefully and the four other women who were gliding down the Mississippi were her only real friends. Harriet was a teacher. She has led a solitary life. First living with her mother and then alone inheriting the home they shared. She has had a few romances, but is skittish and has a big hole in her life. Courtney, the Southern belle, living the good life. A husband who paid little attention and a lover who paid too much. She wanted both but could not choose between them. Catherine, the sculptor on her third marriage. Her present husband did not trust her and accompanied her on this steamboat trip. Did she love him, probably not, she loved her work too much. And finally, Anna, the romance novelist. She had many fictional lovers and other lovers in her lifetime, but she was growing older and the lovers were not there any longer. These four women met at the Peabody Hotel, at the mouth of the Mississippi to start their trip down the Mississisppi River to New Orleans. It would be in New Orleans that the ashes of Baby would be dispersed. There would be men on this trip, stories and truths to be told and revealed. Would the lives of these four women change as a result of this adventure? You Betcha! The novel was engrossing giving a sense of "being there". Not exciting but moving. The lives of these women were not dull and a lesson to be learned in each one. prisrob
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