Eloquent journey of self-discovery forms the heart of 'How to Be Lost'

In Amanda Eyre Ward's "How to Be Lost," Caroline Winters's sister Ellie has been missing for 15 years. At the age of 5, she simply vanished one day from school.

However, as the tale begins, it is really Caroline who is lost. At the age of 32, she hasn't had a date in a year and has given up all aspirations of being a concert pianist, insteadlanding a nowhere job as a cocktail waitress in New Orleans. She spends days in bed with trashy novels and nights serving drinks and "fantasizing about strange men." She has a tenuous relationship with her sister Madeline, ensconced in an unstable marriage in New York City, and has deeply buried her emotional connection to her aging mother.

But once every year, Caroline succumbs to maternal pressure to "come home for Christmas," and journeys back to the town of her privileged childhood on Long Island Sound. It is there, following one of her mother's famous holiday extravaganzas, that Caroline sees a photograph of a woman in a magazine and becomes convinced that it is Ellie all grown up. Armed with maps, xeroxes of the photograph, a book called "Be Your Own Private Dick," and a case of Dixie beer, Caroline heads to Missoula, Mont., to begin searching for her long-lost sister.

Ward, author of the celebrated "Sleep Toward Heaven," chronicles Caroline's tale with vivid eloquence, clarity, and dark, nuanced humor. "How to Be Lost" unfolds as part suspense novel, part memoir, as Caroline is accompanied on her trip by the memories of her troubled childhood and reflections on the state of her present life. Her story unfolds with the wry tone of someone very bright and sharply perceptive hiding a wounded heart behind layers of cynicism.

Caroline describes her charming alcoholic father, who swept her mother off her feet with his "intellect and rugged good looks." But at home, he was most often angry, scaring the girls and their mother with frequent rages. "Days would go by slowly, the air in our house sour with the sadness of a dying marriage. But then an argument would ignite my father's anger, and we would try to hide in the backyard or my closet until the tornado of his frustrated hopes had passed."

Caroline's mother, Isabelle, withdraws into memories of her own childhood and her glory days as a debutante in Savannah, Ga. As time passes, the Winters family slowly falls apart.

A few chapters into the book, Ward begins interspersing Caroline's memories and the narrative of her present-day search with miscellaneous letters "From the Desk of Agnes Fowler." We are quickly led to suspect that this shy librarian, who writes of her love of Gummi Bears and an awkward, slightly stunted social development, may be the disappeared Ellie. Meanwhile, Caroline's travels lead her to her own intriguing and heartbreaking discoveries.

The pacing falters as the narrative shifts between characters and time frames, and the novel's central coincidence is a hard sell. And while romantically satisfying, Caroline's reconnection with a high school acquaintance seems contrived and formulaic. The handsome, sensitive, attentive, and available Anthony seems way too convenient to be convincing.

But in its own quiet way, "How to Be Lost" insinuates itself into a compelling little page turner, as driven by personal revelation as by solving the mystery of Ellie's disappearance. And Ward keeps the book lively with provocative tangents and twists along the way. While the narrative is propelled by Caroline's mission to find her sister, her search ultimately brings her closer to finding herself.