Writer
What Was Lost
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Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Published by She Writes Press
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Can be ordered at your local independent bookstore
“A vivid examination of how troubles from the past affect an unfolding future.”
-Kirkus Reviews
What Was Lost
A Novel by Melissa Connelly
Purchase
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Published by She Writes Press
Can be ordered at your local independent bookstore
Reached #1 on Amazon’s Best Sellers for LGBTQ+ & Coming of Age Fiction
“A vivid examination of how troubles from the past affect an unfolding future.”
-Kirkus Reviews
Description
When a girl feels complicit in her own abuse, how does that thwart the adult woman?
Welling to the surface are memories of a past Marti Farrell tried to bury. The catalyst is her teenage daughter, Tess, whose awakening sexuality is causing Marti an acute unease.
Marti makes an impulsive decision to return to the small Vermont town she ran away from thirty years earlier, an unwitting and unwilling Tess towed along for the journey, further escalating tension between them.
Seeking both forgiveness for lies told, and revenge for secrets held, Marti has a plan. But it all goes awry as she learns the full impact her deception has had on other people’s lives. There’s no more burying the past: Marti has to confront it to release its clutches.
What Was Lost shifts from the 1960’s to 2000 exploring the myriad ways people felt “othered”, and a young girl’s limited options in times before language such as “me, too” helped give voice to these all-too-common occurrences.
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Biography
Melissa Connelly dropped out of high school at age fifteen. Despite this, she went on to receive a BSN in nursing, an MA in special education, and an MFA in creative writing. She’s had a long career working with children in a range of different roles in schools, hospitals, psychiatric clinics and daycares.
Publications include American Heritage Magazine and the anthology, It’s All About Shoes, by Plain View Press. In 2019 she was a finalist for the Montana Prize. Her flash fiction, Go Go Girl, published by Ruminations magazine, was nominated for “Best Small Fictions Anthology” for 2022.
After a lifetime of writing, her first novel, What Was Lost is being published in October 2024 by She Writes Press.
She has a home in the mountains of Western North Carolina but lives most of the year in Brooklyn, New York.
Contact
Contact Publicist for Event Bookings:
Marissa DeCuir
Books Forward
marissa@booksforward.com
Reviews & Testimonials
Midwest Reviews
Publisher’s Weekly
Chirlane McCray
Former first lady of New York City, and Writer
Kirkus Reviews
Our Verdict: Get it
Foreword Reviews
Clarion Rating: 5/5 STARS
“What Was Lost operates like a delicate nesting doll of secrets and confessions hidden within each other in a seemingly peaceful small town, the idealized neighborhood family, and childhood traumas. Each doll shatters the lies of the one before.
Connelly writes tenderly as if releasing a long-held whisper that her protagonist, Marti, has been holding in all her life. The changes in time and POV deftly reveal the way the past is always present.”
Melissa Acquino Coss
Author of Carmen and Grace
“In her searing debut novel, What Was Lost, Melissa Connelly deftly straddles two timelines in the life of a woman who was abused in her childhood, showing us the long shadow of sexual violence, and what it takes to confront the past in an effort to heal family dynamics. I couldn’t put it down.”
Emily Raboteau
Author of novels Lessons for Survival, Searching for Zion, and the Professor’s Daughter
“What Was Lost still runs around in your mind after you’re finished reading. Gripping, deftly told, and full of psychological insight. It always feels like Connelly is describing a living, breathing person as she has a gift for seeing the world through children’s eyes, of any age, and making us experience their piercing joys and sorrows. This is a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, both harrowing and delicately observed.”
Burkhard Bilger
Author of Fatherland, and New Yorker Magazine staff writer
“Stunningly written, unerringly human, and deeply felt, Melissa Connelly’s What Was Lost is everything I yearn for in a novel, a story about people that I love in all of their flawed messiness, trying to make sense of and move through the murk and ache of their pasts, to discover and assert who and what else they might be.”
Lynn Steger Strong
Author of novels Flight, Want, and Hold Still
“Melissa Connelly combines a heavy fist with a light touch, and she knows when to use each. What Was Lost is a searing narrative of sexual abuse, artistic sabotage, and their aftermaths. At the same time, it’s an uncommonly compassionate tracing of the webs of confusion and insight that connect parent to child, child to parent, and generation to generation. Reading Marti’s story made me tingle and ache.”
James L. May
Author of The Body Outside of the Kremlin
Podcasts
“This episode of Big Blend Radio’s 2nd Wednesday Books & Authors Show with Books Forward features debut author Melissa Connelly discusses her new novel, What Was Lost.”
“We’re joined by author Melissa Connelly to discuss her new book, What Was Lost, which delves into the importance of understanding exploitation, recovery, and the journey to self-worth!”
“Melissa’s husband passed away, when she was in her mid 40s. She knew she had to go on for her children. Initially, Melissa found herself on autopilot. She had a realization that she needed to live for herself, because life mattered to her. Melissa always wanted to be a novelist, so she took a bold leap of faith and became a writer/author/novelist. She shares the following nuggets of life wisdom:
- live for ourselves
- we need boundaries
- change and growth are always possible
- even a small step at a time gets us through it
- life is constant change
- we have the agency to make the changes we want to see in our lives”
Related Articles
Written by Melissa Connelly
History Rhymes, Repeats and Backpedals
A writer/Not a writer/A writer
My First Novel: Uncharted Territory in My 60s
Debut Novelist Pens Story Of A Young Girl Crossing State Lines To Get An Abortion, Years Before Roe v Wade
Q&A with Melissa Connelly
Book Club Questions
Keyword Index
Coming of Age • Adolescence • Childhood Trauma • Sexual Abuse • Me, Too • Unwanted Pregnancy • Abortion • Homosexuality • Family • Mother-Daughter Relationships • Single Parent • Creativity
Other Writings
American Heritage Magazine
April/May 2007
Volume 58, Issue 2
Ruminate Magazine
November 2, 2021
Copyright 2023 © Melissa Connelly