Margaret Lewis, an editor in an American publishing company, is reaching her forties. Recovering from breast cancer, she feels lonely and devoid of hope until a sequence of events leads her to Italy. There she encounters a medieval holy woman, whose example unlocks her healing. Blessed is a novel of conversion in which ancient spirituality resonates anew in modern everyday life. Set in the Umbrian hills and the streets of New York, the story portrays the hand of God in transforming suffering into joyful possibility.
Readers’ Reviews
“It’s a story for all women, not just for those who are sick.”
“It gave words to my feelings.”
“I couldn’t put it down and while reading I kept thinking that this couldn’t be fiction. As a breast cancer survivor my spirituality has become a major priority in my life. Thank you for writing a book that touched my soul.”
“When I finished reading, I felt lonely. I missed being part of the adventure.”
“Blessed is a testimony to the spiritual truth that each of us must find, or be found, in our own story and not someone else’s; that a loving God mysteriously works with us through our struggles to make known our soul’s true identity.”
Diana Beck, a middle-aged writer, takes leave of her Californian home to spend a year alone contemplating women’s creativity. She chooses to stay in a village in southern Mexico put on the map by her deceased grandmother, once a famous travel writer. The novel charts the unfolding of the beauty and spirit in women’s art, as Diana records and muses on the motivations and inspirations evident in the lives and works of other (real life) classic women writers, painters and composers. Through the process, and her various activities in the village, including a developing relationship with a man she meets there, she discovers more about her grandmother’s association with the local people. Encountering the power of the Madonna in the local church, she undergoes personal change and finds within it a new direction for her life.
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Readers’ Reviews
“Lost and Found is dense with ideas and yet light-handed, grounded in a generosity and humility of thought quite rare in current fiction but so vital to women as we grapple with the profound questions of identity and creativity. It’s a beautiful book, both timely and eternal, poetic in the best sense of being alert to the beauty of its setting and the wonder of its investigation of the human spirit.”
“Exquisite in describing the feminine condition and other-worldliness of real women.”
“The book is so rich, in a sense of place, of course in poetry and those wonderful women, and yet a page-turner.”
“It’s the kind of book that needs re-reading. Each time I got more from it.”
“The book transplanted me! It invites women to enter into a deep, honest evaluation of their life’s journey without any judgment—only a sense of wonder.”