The Best Most Unlikely Trio since… Never
��LOST & FOUND by Brooke Davis
Books and movies that talk about two unlikely heroes that end up staring a hot boy from the wrong side of the tracks and a girl who���s rich but timid who team up and save the whatever or conquer whatever will from here on out definitely not cut it for me. Not after reading the triple-unlikely trio of heroes in Brooke Davis��� debut novel, Lost & Found.
���������������������� Never have the main group of protagonists been more human, more vulnerable and seemingly, the folks themselves that are in need of saving. And maybe the most compelling part of the whole novel is that there is absolutely no outside help, no mysterious kind-hearted being that saves the group at the precise turning point, a mystic guide along the way. These folks are entirely self-sufficient. Enough already, I need to introduce them:
We meet first Millie Bird, the 7-year-old little girl with bright red hair and rubber boots to match. Precocious little thing, Millie collects a ���Book of Dead Things��� chronicling all the dead things she finds in her life including spiders, birds, her dog, and her father. Morbidity aside, the girl knows one thing for sure: Everyone will die some day, even her, even the little babies pushed in strollers, even her best friends.
Next is Karl, the touch typist, as he is called. A quiet man, 80-something Karl prefers keyboards to spoken words, loves the way he can make sentences and voice his most meaningful thoughts by pressing a sequence of squares to form words. He draws keyboards on his table, imagines them on the legs of his wife, Evie, creates them in the air to express himself after Evie���s death. He���s lonely for sure, yet not ready for the assisted care he���s put in after a bout of grief makes him look almost insane, unable to care for himself anymore. He breaks out of the home, though, not ready to settle down and wait to be reunited with his wife.
Finally, there���s Agatha Pantha, Millie���s aged neighbor and the nonbeliever of the group. Agatha���s been holed up in her house since her husband���s death seven years ago, scared to reveal herself because she knows what society wants to do with ���crazy old widows��� like herself. Agatha keeps to a strict routine, waking up at a strict time, measuring new wrinkles on her body and recording them in her Book of Age, measuring the distances between belly button and breasts, other parts of the body, charting the differences over time. Her other time is spent staring out the window, earning her a reputation of a witch of sorts, the owner of the spooky old house the children keep away from.
The story starts with a character we never meet, Millie���s mother. Millie���s mother takes her shopping at the nearby department store, telling her to stay safely in the big ladies��� underwear department, and then leaves. What would a 7-year-old do? Millie waits patiently for her mother���s return. She makes friends with a mannequin. She hides from shop employees. She puts on all the pretty makeup from the perfume counters, trying to mimic the way her mom does it. She gets caught, some women in a stiff outfit comes to take her away, to find her a new mommy and daddy. At a crucial moment, there��� Karl, causing a distraction in which time Millie runs away from the department store, runs all the way home.
Agatha���s perfect routine is ruined by this little girl, Millie, who keeps knocking on her door, asking if she���s seen her mother, asking if she knows what some papers (her mother���s travel itinerary) mean, asking her questions about her life. Agatha puts it together what���s happened, refuses to let either Millie or herself be caught alone and decides she will take Millie to find her mother herself. Again, just in time, Karl finds the two before they board a train to Melbourne, himself haunted by the idea of helping a little girl escape social services only to leave her alone in the world.
TL;DR: Two eighty-year-olds who are both, along social standards, eligible for assisted living care, take it upon themselves to help a 7-year-old girl they���ve just met find her mother who has purposely ran away and abandoned her little girl. If that���s not a group of heroes and an adventure that you want to read, I guess I cant��� help you.
