Synopses & Reviews
One Monday morning in April, a middle-aged writer walks into her living room to water the plants and finds a woman standing beside her potted fig tree. Dressed in a navy blue trench coat and white Nikes, the woman introduces herself as "Mary. Mother of God.... You know. Mary." Instead of a golden robe or a crown, she arrives bearing a practical wheeled suitcase. Weary after two thousand years of adoration and petition, Mary is looking for a little R and R. She's asked in for lunch, and decides to stay a week. As the story of their visit unfolds, so does the story of Mary-one of the most complex and powerful female figures of our time-and her changing image in culture, art, history, as well as the thousands of recorded sightings that have placed her everywhere from a privet hedge to the dented bumper of a Camaro.
As this Everywoman and Mary become friends, their conversations, both profound and intimate, touch upon Mary's significance and enduring relevance. Told with humor and grace, Our Lady of the Lost and Found is an absorbing tour through Mary's history and a thoughtful meditation on spirituality, our need for faith, and our desire to believe in something larger than ourselves.
Review
"Schoemperlen's...intellectualizing is entertaining." Chicago Tribune
Review
"Our Lady of the Lost and Found satisfies the hunger for both good...storytelling and honest-to-God soul-searching." Elle
Review
"[A] highly intelligent and unique discourse on philosophy and the phenomenon of human faith." Library Journal
Review
"This delightful portrait of the Mother of God as an exhausted contemporary female sporting a blue trench coat and white Nikes will appeal to readers seeking an unconventional form of spiritual renewal." Booklist
Synopsis
On an otherwise typical Monday morning, a middle-aged writer enters her living room and finds a woman standing by her fig tree. The woman is wearing a blue trench coat, white sneakers, and a white shawl over her hair. She is holding a purse and a suitcase. She is the Virgin Mary and after 2000 years of petition, adoration, and traveling, she's in need of a little R&R.
Invited in for lunch, Mary decides to stay for one week, during which an unlikely friendship develops. As our narrator learns the remarkable history of one of the most influential and complex women of all time, she is moved to examine life's big questions and her own capacity for faith. Witty and gently ironic, this inventive novel is an inspiration to believers and nonbelievers alike.
About the Author
Diane Schoemperlen is the author of Our Lady of the Lost and Found; In the Language of Love; and five short story collections, including Forms of Devotion, which won the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1998; and The Man of My Dreams, which was nominated for a Governor General's Award and a Trillium Award.