Akemi Dawn Bowman’s Where the Lost Ones Go (2022) follows Eliot Katayama, a child of the West Coast and California sunshine, who moves to Roseheart, Maine, with her parents. She is 12 years old. She has just lost her beloved grandmother, Babung, and her savvy parents are trying to help her navigate that loss even as they themselves are dealing with grief.
The book opens with Eliot’s memories of her grandmother’s house as a contrast to their fixer upper Victorian home on the East Coast: “Babung’s house never reeked of scented chemicals. Most of the time her living room smelled like orchids and jasmine tea, her kitchen smelled like tonkatsu curry and dumplings, and her bedroom always, always smelled like peppermint.”
Eliot is obsessed with ghosts. She has her own ghost detector to observe anomalies in the electromagnetic spectrum. She wears various charms to ward off (evil) ghosts. She sets up an ancestral offering of a makeshift altar to Babung, her late paternal grandmother, amidst the moving boxes. She wants to leave rice to feed the dead (as a practice from the Oban days of remembrance), but her parents discourage that for fear of pests. Her witty father quips:
‘I’ve seen Ratatouille. You can’t trust pests with seasoning. They get a taste for fine dining, and the next thing you know your kitchen is overrun with all their friends and family.’
As the family settles into Roseheart, Eliot meets some of the local girls. She bicycles around and explores the town. By happenstance, she ends up weeding and gardening for Mrs. Delvaux, who is accused of witchcraft and stealing human souls by the local girls. She is the owner of a large old house, the Honeyfield House, which has a history.
Eliot is obsessed with reconnecting with her late grandmother because in her decline with dementia and then death, she did not have a chance to say goodbye, to process her loss.
Then, she finds a key that enables her access to the Hollow, an in-between space centered around the Honeyfield House, in which human spirits in limbo (ghosts) exist. The ghosts have “unfinished business” in the world, which is keeping them from moving on. Their memories are dissipating over time, and they are losing what was precious in the lives that they have lived, namely, their loving connections with others. Human souls are an accumulation of their memories from their lived lives. They are a way to ground people in their identities.
This alternate universe is a version of the physical real:
The makeshift stairs are roots of a tree, sanded on top but rough on the sides. Vines trail from the ceiling where the light fixtures used to be, and some of the plaster seems to be breaking off the walls.
The descriptions of the various locations are lush and evocative. For example, the greenhouse on the property is rendered:
The building is covered in panels of glass, and it’s as wide as it is tall, with a faded duck-egg blue frame. The roof is curved and covered in cathedral-like spires, and cobwebs trail beneath the overhang. Some of the lower glass windows are broken, and several hardy weeds have spread through the opening and into the greenhouse.
The book’s pacing is fast. A constant theme is the inexorable passing of time as a part of the universal human condition. There are moments of comedic relief, mostly through the observations of Eliot’s father. The Katayamas have a strong social conscience and moral compass. The world they live in is a complex one, with rich mysteries. Stories are an important part of remembrance, and deep friendships and affections enrich people’s lives. It takes courage to fully express love and to fully experience heartbreak.
Akemi Dawn Bowman’s Where the Lost Ones Go engages powerful issues of change and adaptivity, friendships, and mortality. The story is powerfully constructed, with charismatic characters. Eliot, at the center, is sensitive and gutsy; she problem-solves with verve. The twisty plot involves deft surprises and riddle-solving. The dialogue reads as real and attuned to character and personality.
This book is a potent and thought-provoking short novel for junior readers.
Shalin Hai-Jew has worked in higher education for many years. She has edited dozens of nonfiction educational books and authored a dozen with a number of publishers.
