The Lost Hours

The Lost Hours is by Karen White, who also wrote The Memory of Water. I enjoyed The Lost Hours very much! It was a book that kept me up late reading! A sure sign of a good book!

Piper Mills lost her parents in a car accident when she was about six years old, leaving her with a childish belief that nothing bad would ever happen to her again since the worst thing that could happen to one had already happened to her. She was raised by her grandparents and they taught her to ride horses. She became quite good and was an Olympian hopeful, when tragedy again struck Piper's live and she was almost killed by a fall from her horse. She was left with serious injuries and would not ride again. She had spent the last few years doing genealogy for other people. When her grandfather died,she returned to Savannah and the home that her grandparents had left her to recover and heal.

The home that was left to Piper was the home where she was raised. Her grandmother was still alive in a nursing home but with Alzheimer's disease. After Piper moved to the house, she met with the attorney, who gave Piper a gift that her grandmother had left with him for safe keeping. It was a small gold charm, with nothing else, no chain, no note. Soon Piper remembered when she was 12 years old that she and her grandfather had buried a small box of her grandmother's in the backyard.

The following day Piper begins going through the house and looks in an old trunk where her grandmother kept her knitting materials. In there Piper finds a very small baby blue sweater. Later that day, another attorney brings over an envelope for Piper. Inside is a letter written to someone named Lillian and a key. When Piper goes to visit her grandmother, she takes the sweater and tries to ask her about it. Then she returns home to find the buried box. It contains torn scrapbook pages, a photo and a newspaper article.

After all of this, Piper then discovers a hidden room in the attic. All of this leads her to wanting to learn more about her grandmother's life.

The premise of the book is:

"Every woman should have a daughter to tell her stories to. Otherwise, the lessons learned are as useless as spare buttons from a discarded shirt. And all that is left is a fading name and the shape of a nose or the color of hair. The men who write the history books will tell you the stories of battles and conquests. But the women will tell you the stories of people's hearts."

Great book!