by Diane Schoemperlen
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd | March 22, 2001 | Hardcover
She realized later that there had been signs.
The kitchen faucet, which had been dripping for a year and a half, stopped. The toaster, which had recently been refusing to surrender the bread, popped up with enthusiasm. At the drugstore, all the things she needed were on sale. And she miraculously found her long lost high school charm bracelet, with the "Sweet Sixteen" amulet still intact.
So when the Virgin Mary appears in her living room sporting a blue trenchcoat and battered white Nikes, she shouldn't be surprised. Now Mary is asking to stay for a week's R & R. And her hostess isn't even Catholic. . .
In Our Lady of the Lost and Found, Diane Schoemperlen has once again brilliantly re-imagined the structure and form of the novel. This is the story of how a visit from the Virgin Mary propels an ordinary forty-something writer into a vibrant examination of life's big questions. She discovers how her uncertainty and doubts actually make her the perfect candidate for becoming a person of faith; how she can be both victim and villain in her own story; and how what looks like irony often turns out to be grace.
Along the way, in a unique and seamless blend of fiction, history and philosophy, Mary is revealed to us. She is the mother of Jesus, purveyor of miracles, and the enigmatic figure who inhabits our own collective consciousness- yet whom we know little about.
Our Lady of the Lost and Found is a novel that redefines the notion of fiction and non-fiction; truth and honesty; doubt and faith. Infused with Schoemperlen's trademark wit and unpretentious, gently ironic style, it is a magical masterpiece of storytelling.