Lost & Found

Lost & Found: A Memoir
by Kathryn Schulz
Random House (January 11, 2022), 241 pages
Kindle edition $12.99, Amazon hardcover $19.08

Kathryn Schulz’s memoir Lost & Found came out to favorable notices. Justifiably so.

Schulz opens the book describing her reaction to learning of the death of her father and her own experience of being lost. She writes about her father who came to the United States as a youngster, fleeing the war in Europe. She recalls her father as she was growing up, and how he was a skilled storyteller. Schulz then describes how her father was constantly losing things: keys, wallet, whatever. That didn’t bother him much, but it kept his wife and his two daughters busy following up. Schulz tells us how literate her father was and how capable he was as a lawyer.

The author then circles back and writes about her father’s decline and how hard it was on the family, as he did not have the clarity he once did. Staying on the theme of loss, she writes about how the family finally had to decide to let him go.

Schulz then moves to the theme of “found.” She writes about meeting a sister writer with whom she quickly fell in love. She describes how their relationship developed and how C. (as Schulz refers to her) helped her move her parents out of their house and into a condo (loss again).

She tells us that her parents loved C. and she describes meeting C.’s family who were completely accepting of her. The author provides a detailed account of their wedding and how well the two families got along. This was remarkable in that Schulz’s family was midwestern and nonobservant Jewish while C.’s family was Southern and devoutly Christian.

Near the end of the book Schulz tells us that she and C. were expecting a child. She did not say which one of them was pregnant nor how the pregnancy came about, but I suppose those things (especially the latter) are none of our business.

Lost and Found describes a lot of pain and a lot of joy. Rather like life.