Lucy Ferriss - The Lost Daughter

Selected Works

Christina Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children"

"Lucy Ferriss brings her signature honesty, clarity, and grace to bear on Christina Stead's famously challenging and rewarding novel about the frightening misuses of paternal power. I happily followed her into such literary byways as what to do with "impossible" characters (in books and in life), the virtues and pitfalls of excess in fiction, and how writing can sometimes save our souls. Through it all, Ferriss reckons with her own late father and his influence on her emerging artist's vision. This is a beautiful blend of memoir and deep reading."—Pamela Erens

Essays

Meditations for a New Century

"Lucy Ferriss's modern-day meditations are harrowing, whimsical, elegant, and probing. These beautifully composed pieces are small miracles of the essayist's art, and few writers at work today are as deft as Ferriss at finding wonder and meaning in the ordinary, the overlooked, the unusual, and the familiar." --Sudip Bose, American Scholar

Fiction

The Misconceiver

The Misconceiver is a startling novel in ways that highlight how unsurprising most pro-choice novels are. Ferriss isn't interested in merely confirming our liberal ideals; she makes us work for them. . . . The novel offers a challenging exploration of one woman's struggle to work through the profound moral dilemmas of her life. -- Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Foreign Climes

"The geographic breadth of Foreign Climes is only the beginning of its power. What makes the collection stunning is Ferriss's ability to go deep inside her characters, to the hidden places where we are foreign to those closest to us and even to ourselves, inviting profound reckoning." -- Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

A Sister to Honor

"As ineluctable as a Greek tragedy." -- Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs

The Lost Daughter

"From its harrowing prologue to its final sentences, I was emotionally engaged with this fine novel. Ferriss is a masterful storyteller." —Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much Is True

Memoir

Unveiling the Prophet

"Ferriss’s exploration of St. Louis’s Veiled Prophet Ball is a must read. . . . This is one of the best books of the year."

-- Riverfront Times

Quick Links

The Lost Daughter

The Lost Daughter: Behind the book

The Lost Daughter began with headlines. Police had been finding the tiny remains of unwanted babies in dumpsters and restrooms. This wasn't news. What was news was that the parents turned out to be middle-class teenagers. How could this have happened? Well, I thought, I know how it happened. And so I set out to write a depressing story. But along the way, my teenaged characters, never caught, grew up. They kept their guilt buried inside them, carrying it as we all carry the mistakes of our past, letting them weigh us down. Then, surprisingly, I discovered this: the baby lived. And The Lost Daughter was born.

What people are saying

In the same way that Judi Dench won an Oscar in 1999 for eight minutes of screen time in "Shakespeare in Love," Ms. Ferriss's prologue is a doozy at a mere 11 pages. She has a real knack for creating dramatic tension.

--The New York Times

Lucy Ferriss's The Lost Daughter delivers the goods: flawed but sympathetic characters and a plot that will keep readers turning the pages voraciously. From its harrowing prologue to its final sentences, I was emotionally engaged.

--Wally Lamb, author of I Know this Much is True and We Are Water

The Lost Daughter is a complex, engaging novel about guilt, secrecy, and the mysteries of family. Lucy Ferriss is a courageous and thought-provoking writer.

--Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers and The Abstinence Teacher

This achingly beautiful novel is the work of a master American realist. With spell-binding attentiveness and intimacy it explores what a husband and wife can be sure they know about each other, but also the inaccessible places where the hidden past lies threateningly coiled, and which love must also find a way to reach.

--Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name

The Lost Daughter is a hugely affecting meditation on the fragility of the strongest bonds, when it comes to marriage, and the way we can be all thumbs, emotionally, our own hearts feeling like foreign objects. Yet it's also about the courage and grace the best of us continually manage. A beautifully constructed and moving novel.

--Jim Shepard, author of You Think That's Bad

Lucy Ferriss holds a mirror to today's headlines, smashes it, and turns the splintered shards into a tension-filled, beautifully written story of the moment, when a deadly secret takes on a life of its own.

--Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, author of Girls of Tender Age