I read the book Lost by Jacqueline Davies. The book starts off by telling you about Essie, the main character's, baby sister being born. Later you find out her name is Zelda. Essie is basically Zelda's mom, because their own mother is depressed due to their father passing away. Zelda is adored by Essie. Essie is willing to do anything for her. You can definitely tell Essie loves her.
Next, the book takes you to present day. Essie, works in a factory that makes clothing. She comes across,the new More...

Grant Lawson
Honors English 9
Lost Book Review

I have recently read the book Lost and I would have to give it a one. Essie can tell from the moment she lays eyes on Harriet Abbott: this is a woman who has taken a wrong turn in life. Why else would an educated, well-dressed, clearly upper-crust girl end up in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory setting sleeves for six dollars a day? But Harriet isn’t the only one who is lost. Essie wanders between the opposing emotions of her love for the young would-b More...

This was had been on my TBR list forever, and then I got it out and it was in my TBR stack forever and then I finally decided that this was ridiculous and I should just read it. So I did.

In this book, Davies intertwines the stories of two girls, Essie and Harriet, and also two historical events--the Triangle fire and the disappearance of Dorothy Arnold a few months before. It's straight historical fiction, with Essie as our narrator. I love historical fantasy as much as the next person, but it w More...

This book is a good book. It's pretty boring at the beggining but as you go deeper into the book, you will like it.

Here's a quote from the book that I liked best:

" It;s like if you're on a street corner and someone next to you says, "I lost a penny," you would take a look around and do your best to help find it. Sure, you would. But if someone on that same corner says, "I lost a diamond ring," you would get down on your hands and knees and search 'til the sun went down. And the next day, you'd More...

One of my Comp 102 classes is working with oral histories taken from survivors of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire for their current research/writing project. My favorite university librarian, a history buff, has been great about sending me articles and other information to share with the students. This week she loaned me Davies's excellent YA novel. I read it in two evenings. Davies intertwines two stories from the turn of the last century: the disappearance of the daughter of a wealth More...

At age 16, Essie Rosenfeld is working at the Triangle Shirt Factory on the Lower East Side in New York City. Her family lives on the edge of poverty and the small wages she earns for working long hours, 6 days a week, help pay the rent, put food on the table, and spoil her little sister, Zelda.

Early on, we get the sense that something terrible has happened in Essie’s life (Zelda has died), but it takes her the entire book for her to come to terms with her loss. This is why she befriends the new More...

I would have loved this book if I'd read it as a young adult because of the emotion of the telling.

The author did a wonderful job bringing to life a past time where hats were works of art, street grinders still had monkeys, and girls worked in sweat shops sewing shirts.

The story is told by a nicely fleshed out main character who was both likable and sympathetic. The plot moves along at a good clip, helped along by a real life mystery.

There were a couple of things that did bother me a little th More...

I think it must be terrible to be lost, but so much worse to be forgotten. p. 230, Lost.

There’s no chance in forgetting the characters in Jacqueline Davies’s Lost, so vivid and true are their voices. Like the more recent tragedy of 9/11, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911* is now burned into my consciousness as if with a hot brand. Seventeen-year-old Essie Rosenfeld lives on the lower east side of Manhattan in 1911. She has been taking care of her irrepressible, fierce bad rabbit of a More...

What's nice about this historical fiction novel dealing with the tragic accident at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911 NYC is that there is so much ELSE going on. Essie is only sixteen and is/was the primary person responsible for raising her little sister Zelda when her mother succumbed to depression after the death of her husband and the child's subsequent birth. Essie has blocked out Zelda's death, which the reader only knows is coming in the narrative. The story is split, and marked by More...

I have a mild obsession with immigrant stories from the turn of the century, especially those where the immigrants lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, so when the cover of this book caught my eye and I read the flap, I knew I wanted to try it.

Essie and her family have already had their share of heartbreak. When we meet her, her father has recently passed away and her mother is giving birth to a second sibling for Essie. This baby, born when Essie is 10, becomes the child of her heart and More...

Historical fiction, family, friendship, death/grief, New York in the early 1900s, poverty, factory work.

This is a beautifully written book that has sections that flash back in time between each chapter. Essie is denying/grieving the loss of her sister as she works as a seamstrees in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. A new colleague/friend Harriet Abbott is going through a similar situation.

I think what I most liked about this book is that the author Jacqueline Davies wove actual historical event More...

This was a nice enough book (as the alt-text on the stars says, "it was ok"), that carefully weaves together a few mysteries: the true identity of an upper-crust girl who shows up to work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the fate of Essie's family being just two of the prominent ones. Essie has a strong, distinctive voice that shows through both the "contemporary" chapters and the flashback chapters about Essie's life with her little sister.

I was, however, disappointed in the scenes set in More...

Essie is a young girl living in New York City during the early 1900s. We first meet her as a ten-year-old girl who stays home on the day her mom delivers a baby sister. When her mom doesn't show any interest in the baby, Essie takes over and the child becomes "hers." Essie's mother is too distraught from losing her husband and is overcome with worry that there will not be enough money to raise another mouth to feed. Later, Essie goes to works in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and it is there th More...

This beautifully-written book offers both compelling characters in Essie, Zelda and Harriet, and a fascinating time and setting (Lower East Side Manhattan, early 1900s). On a deeper level, LOST is Essie's journey from grief and denial to wholeness and the future's possibilities.

LOST's personalized view of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy toward the book's end is gripping and an important part of the plot, but even without this historic event or the sub-plot of a missing heiress, LOST woul More...

This is THE best book of all time. Before, i didn't really have a favorite book, i just had lots that i thought were my favorites. That was before this book. The detail is incredible, the charachters are amazing, and the setting is great. overall this book is a must-read and should be on everybodys to-read list. This book beats any book of the twilight series -and i loved them all so its not like im saying anything is better-, its even better than the host -and i think that if i had to choose a More...

"Lost" by Jaqueline Davies is a motivating story about a young adult named Esther and the struggles she faces in her life. Taking place in the early 1900's, Esther's experiences working at the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory to support her family are made relatable to anyone trying to support a family today. After her father dies during her mother's pregnancy, Esther is forced to take care of herself, her mother, her brother Saulie, and her newborn sister Zelda. Meanwhile, she is trying to have eno More...

This story takes an interesting look at a time period not often explored in teen fiction. The historical atmosphere never feels forced; the author never digresses into unnecessary detail at the expense of the plot. Essie is a strong, flawed girl, and her denial of her sister's death comes across as realistic, as does her relationship with Harriet, her mysterious and more educated friend. I enjoyed the book, although the flashbacks to Essie's relationship with her little sister didn't add as much More...

I've always been drawn to stories about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in NYC, March 26, 1911, that killed 141 people, mostly seamstress girls. I don't know why. Maybe a previous life?

Jacqueline Davies has written a historical fiction that interweaves this tragedy with another tragedy at the time for which I was unaware. On January 26, 1911 The New York Times reported on the disappearance of a Dorothy Harriet Camille Arnold, the daughter of a wealthy family and niece of a former Supreme Co More...

I picked this book up from the top of a pile of young-adult fiction brought in by my wife, lying in our room, and didn't put it down until I finished it. They page layout was beautiful, separating dated journal entries from chronological chapters, weaving memory and current story-telling throughout the book. The events only took place over the course of a few weeks in history, but not once during the read was I bored or questioning the author's intent. Everything about it was beautifully written More...

This book is packaged as YA/Youth Fiction, and if this is the quality of work that genre has to offer, I need to spend more time in that section. Quite simply one of the most powerful stories I've read. Impeccably researched and set in 1911 at the time of the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire in NYC, the story follows Essie Rosenfeld, a young Jewish girl fighting for survival while dealing with nearly unbearable tragedy. Two converging stories are skillfully intertwined and another true story co More...

This historical fiction novel was painful and compelling. Tragedy interwoven with tragedy. The flashback chapters brought us ever closer to discovering with Essie a truth too horrible to remember. Since I had read and knew the history of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company I also knew we were headed for tragedy on that front as well. There are several rather graphic and disturbing descriptions of accidents and burning. Perhaps, this was not the best book for me to read since I have been operating in More...

This is an absolutely lovely novel about a young girl named Essie who is a worker at the infamous Triangle factory. The novel toggles back and forth in time between when she was a young girl and her life as a teenage worker in the factory. There are many secrets in this novel which will tantalize readers. Why does Essie not accept that her baby sister has died in a terrible accident? Who is Essie's new friend at the factory who has a mysterious past? Essie is an endearing character, with her dev More...

An atmosphere of terrible forboding grips the reader from the first pages of Essie's story of tenement and factory life in the early 1900s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Essie's biggest worry, it seems, is her high-spirited and often disobedient younger sister Zelda. But then Harriet Abbott, a girl from a wealthy background, comes to work alongside Essie at the local sweatshop, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Essie's willingness to love her sister unconditionally and to reach out in frien More...

It is a shame enough people haven't read this book for libraries to keep it on their shelves. The jacket says the book is for children 12 years old and up. It is not escape literature. It is thought provoking. Plot wise it is a bit slow as the author has opted to tell two stories simultaneously. The stories get closer together until the point where they meld land become one story. Although there are some elements like the idiomatic yiddish words sprinkled throughout the book and the strange synt More...

This was a historical fiction novel that twined together two newspaper reports from Manhattan, New York in the early 1900s. Thus, an amazing book evolved.

Essie is the protagonist, and she is a 16 year old girl. She lives with her mother, brother, and sister. Essie loves to make hats, like really make them. Not just embellish, but actually make the frame and everything!

The narration goes back and fourth between Essie's diary that flits through her early life, then the "present" (but still 1900s) More...

One of my least favorite on the Gateway list. I don't even know why this one didn't work for me. I just felt bored with the story. There were supposed to be a few plot twists, but I saw them coming, so there was no surprise for me, which made me disappointed. I also couldn't really relate to the main character, which made it hard for me to get into the story. I don't like historical fiction that much to begin with, so it was hard to get into this one with the slow moving storyline. I think it'd More...

This is a hard book for me to rate. The prose was engaging. I liked the set up with 16 year-old Essie working in the sweatshop in NY lower East side, turn on the century. I liked the relationship between Essie and Harriet. I just thought that this book never really went deep enough. I wanted much more out of it. The story itself was a complete downer, and yes I get that this was a quasi-historical novel and all, but this was pretty grim. I've left funerals feeling more upbeat than I did when I f More...

When I first read the jacket blip for this book, I was immediately interested. Here was a book that not only addressed one of America’s greatest work tragedies, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, but also depicted the lives of people during this time. I also loved that the language and actions matched the people of the era. Along with the historical view point, I enjoyed reading a fictional account that did not go bland with history. Davies did a magnificent job on research and was able to in More...

Things that were brilliant: a mystery (a true historical mystery I didn't even know about), a reminder that the historical novels I deign to read are always much more interesting than assumed, a teenager with a sweet 6-year-gap love interest, a solid friendship (with a 20-something character! rare in YA), and artistic design -- besides the brilliantly bright colors of the jacket/cover/end pages, the flashback half of the story is written on gray pages patterned to look like cracked old apartment More...

ATOS Book Level: 4.4
Interest Level: Upper Grades (UG 9-12)
AR Points: 8.0
Lexile: 680L
Word Count: 58860


a story of love, loss and longing. Set in the early 1900's it portray's the life of a 16 year old girl who lives in poverty. She get's a job in a factory sewing garments 6 day's a week, with the money she makes and the money her mom makes at the bakery, there's still little or nothing left at the end of the month.
The story alternates between the story of Essie and her sister Zelda, starting on th More...