Where the Lost Wander: A Novel

Written by Amy Harmon

Narrated by Lauren Ezzo and Shaun Taylor-Corbett

In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss.

The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both.

But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through hostile territory only to come between them as they seek to build a life together.

When a horrific tragedy strikes, decimating Naomi’s family and separating her from John, the promises they made are all they have left. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually…make peace with who they are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Apr 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781799750390

Amy Harmon

Amy Harmon is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times bestselling author. Her books have been published in eighteen languages—truly a dream come true for a little country girl from Utah. Harmon has written fifteen novels, including the USA Today bestsellers The Smallest Part, Making Faces, and Running Barefoot, as well as the #1 Amazon bestselling historical novel From Sand and Ash, which won a Whitney Award for book of the year in 2016. Her novel A Different Blue is a New York Times bestseller. Her USA Today bestselling fantasy The Bird and the Sword was a Goodreads Best Book of 2016 finalist. For updates on upcoming book releases, author posts, and more, go to www.authoramyharmon.com.

Reviews for Where the Lost Wander

[4evasummer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Narration was excellent. Love Amy for her woven threads of story telling.

[Elizabeth B. H. Larson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was an addictive read! It was a story that was fun to get lost in and I was disappointed when I finished it. I will definitely read it again.

[Melissa Perez · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved this so much!! And I love Amy Harmon’s writing it’s beautifully written and the storyline is so believable!

[Vincent Seapara · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Interesting characters both pioneer and Native American. Really enjoyed the use of real historical people featured within the ficctional story.

[Jill Ann · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The author did a beautiful job of not only making the enduring spirit of the pioneers come to life, but also of representing the diverse beauty of the many Native American tribes. A beautiful story of the many ways to show love, woven within a memorable romance. A must read for any fan historical fiction.

[storageroom707 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely in love❤️ What a journey! I felt every smile, every laugh, every heartbreak, every pain and all the peace.

[Teresa Breckman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thought this was a wonderful book. The narrators were awesome. I enjoyed their voices.

[Ann G Miller-Sobel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What an adventure. The author has such a wonderful raider for building characters and twists. The pain and anguish of the families were so endearing I felt their pain and loss. Glad my ancestors trip to America was not as harrowing.

[Crissey Barrick · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this story from start to finish. It is uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time.

I saw quite a few comments about the narration, but I thought both narrators did a great job. Give it a chance if other reviews make you hesitate.

It is fascinating but yet important to look into our history and continue to learn from it, because so many have forgotten it or choose not to look into it. This book serves as a good reminder for us all when we focus on our troubles and tribulations these days, which I think compared to our ancestors from long ago, are not as severe or as common. We often take for granted our automobiles that have AC and heat, dishwashers, washing machines, and computers, which has served to make our lives so much easier. We aren’t having to spend the entire day washing clothing.

I look forward to reading more of Amy Harmon’s books!

[K G · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Must be read, not listened to. Cannot get past the female narrators heavy lisp to give this book a fair shot. Premise looks promising but after reading a few reviews and seeing several complaints abt the narrator I’m not willing to endure 7-10hrs of her.

[SerendipityReads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well, since the narration seems to be the main point of disagreement in the reviews, I’ll cast a vote on the “I enjoyed it” side.

This book didn’t include as much romance as I usually prefer, and the people complaining that it’s too much must really prefer NONE at all.

But it is indeed a very sweet love story, against the background of a turbulent time, and some truly horrific tragedies.

And most importantly, quite well written.

[Emily Griffin Neill · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very romance forward, but a nice story with well written characters.

[Charlotte · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Naomi and John have a beautiful, heartbreaking love story that can move mountains.

The backstory behind Where The Lost Wander is so heartfelt and dear to Amy's heart that it makes the story that much more meaningful. The tale of these two lovers is not an easy ride and will bring tears to your eyes. It's a story of two heritages trying to become one but being torn apart and having to find themselves again.

Their love is so open and refreshing, back when the only way you could find love was through being yourself and nothing else. You had to bare it all out on the table in a short amount of time because who knew what tomorrow would bring.

[Michelle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent read! Really interesting to hear about real people and how they might have lived and behaved.

[Angie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was right there! Excellent story excellent narration, I highly recommend!

[Alice Peard · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book! Love it! Strong characters, amazing story telling and beautiful insights.

[Bethy Mora · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow, I am stunned. This was the most spectacular read! It was almost like I was there feeling all the bumps on the wagon. I truly Love Love John Lowerys character.
I honestly love that Amy put her authors note informing where all her characters came from. I will be purchasing the hard copy soon!
Trigger warning for some - infant loss-

[Laura Lindsay · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great story about both sides of the historical era. The two narrators had very pleasant voices.

[Regan Deppe Willers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have no words…truly an incredible book! We will recommending to my friends!

[Holly Laddusaw · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved these characters! I loved the wisdom, strife, strength and humor in this book. I played Oregon Trail as a child, and fell in love with this book about a family’s/couple’s journey to reach Oregon now as an adult. I didn’t want it to end - one of my favorite books!

[No One Special · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to love this, but alas.

The Good:
- Amy Harmon is excellent at worldbuilding — the descriptions of settings are lovely and (usually) not too long-winded. She's great at evoking color, movement, shape, and scent.
- She's also very good at describing action, especially events with a lot of urgency, such as a boy being chased by Native men on horseback or a baby being swept away by a river's current. Great stuff.
- John is a genuinely interesting and sympathetic character. His narrative voice is strong, and he feels like a real person, someone who fits very well in his time and place. It's very easy to empathise with him, even when he's being a bit of a jackass.
- Shaun Taylor-Corbett was an excellent choice for the male narrator. Beautiful voice, great pacing, good at injecting the right tone and emotion at the right times.

The Bad:
- Too many bodice-ripper style romance tropes. The tormented, near-silent male protagonist. The quirky, high-spirited female protagonist. Insta-love — no real reason why John and Naomi fall for each other, except they're both hot and are oddly fascinated with one another. The wise, sympathetic mother (I actually quite liked her, but still). The grumbly, disapproving father. Bleh. I've seen it way too much.
- Naomi is just ... not a BAD character, but an odd one. I never felt like I knew her all that well, despite her being one of two first-person narrators. We're clearly meant to see Naomi as stubborn and spirited, but really she's mostly just kind of a jerk. Her motivation is unclear; she seems to have no desires except getting John to marry her. She feels like she's there mostly to drive the story forward, to give John something to stew over, as opposed to being a full person in her own right. Side note: her speech patterns are also strangely modern, and that kinda pulled me out of the story. She feels more like a character from the 20th century, rather than the 19th.
- The depictions of Native people are just ... oof. Rough. Apart from John and a couple of others, Native men are almost universally depicted as violent and uncaring. Native women — despite Harmon telling us otherwise — are generally shown as meek and servile to men. There is very little distinction made between the Pawnee, the Dakota, the Shoshone, and any other tribe the emigrants stumble across, despite these being peoples with their own cultures, their own ways of living and being. If you can't write about cultures and races that are not your own without Othering them, you shouldn't be writing about them.
- The female reader, Lauren Ezzo, kinda threw me off. Her voice is really pleasant to listen to, except when she's voicing a grown male character — then she just sounds constipated. It was pretty awful and made me super uncomfortable for reasons I can't quite articulate.

[ChristineAnitaYelichRoberts · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely loved What the Wind Knows. It’s actually one of the best books I’ve read/listened to in a long while. But I just could not stand the narration of this one. I’ve tried 2 times. But could not. I’ll have to sit and try reading it one day. It’s so sad when a good book has ineffective narration.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I downloaded this novel two years ago, mid-lockdown, after struggling through Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. The two books don't have a lot in common - a character who straddles the old world and the new world but belongs in neither, and the settling of the West - but another review recommended Amy Harmon's fictional account of her husband's ancestors over Jackson's epic romance, and I was keen to read a more 'realistic' version of white 'emigrants' hunting the American Dream and taking land and life from Native American tribes. Sadly, what I found instead is the Pioneer version of James Cameron's Titanic, with history relegated to the sidelines in favour of a Young Adult love story between a half-Pawnee mule man and the beautiful and spirited daughter of a family seeking a better future on the Overland Trail to California. The novel launches into violence and cartoon clichés with a prologue that is either a hook or a curse, but soon drifts into the plodding first person narration of John Lowry, born to a Pawnee woman and raised by white parents, and Naomi May, a young widow of twenty setting off from Missouri with her family and her former in-laws along the Overland Trail to California. The Mays are like fugitives from Little House, with the sons all given names starting with 'W', and the mother heavily pregnant (would a woman about to give birth really set off across the country in a wagon?) Naomi is the typical heroine in a romantic historical novel - beautiful, independent, strong and outspoken. She and John Lowry, who has been hired to lead the wagon train as far as the first fort on the trail, fall instantly in love, and proceed to ping pong their mutual infatuation between narratives which sound exactly alike. Weak first person narration is a bug bear of mine, and really there was no need for both Naomi and John to share the story. Relaying the googoo eyes and feigned indifference in boring omniscient third person would have worked better.The plot is limited to the hardships of driving across the country in the 1850s - hunger, isolation, disease, poor animals being driven to death, women giving birth to defenceless babies - and of course the all-consuming relationship between John and Naomi, and only the lead up to the events of the prologue kept me awake. The reader feels every sluggish mile along with the characters, which could be either clever writing or commentary on the tedious pacing of the story: The slow monotony makes us drowsy, especially in the afternoons, and more than once someone in the train has tumbled from their wagon, lulled to sleep by the endless motion.And when the plot finally catches up with the passing pages, and the Injuns with the May family, the action comes at the cost of stereotypes not seen since black and white cowboy films, or indeed Ramona. Arrows, scalpings, abduction and rape, war councils and the trading of horse flesh for human. And of course the Hero comes to the rescue, engaging in macho posturing but understanding and patient of fragile female emotions. Readers of romance novels will no doubt find more to appreciate in John, Naomi and their 'grass is greener' trek across America, but I found the story and characters rather bland and compliant. When I read that John Lowry, Chief Washakie and the experience of travelling in a wagon train were actually based on real people and diaries in the author's afterword, I wished I could have read those first hand documents instead of history made palatable in novel form.

[desiree_reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Saddle up to a couch cushion and don’t forget your box of tissues because you’re going to need ‘em! A fascinating journey, and an emotional odyssey, the kernel for this tale began with the captivating account of an ancestor, John Lowry, who was the 5x great grandfather of Harmon’s spouse – a man with an unusual mixed heritage of a Pawnee Native American mother and a “white” father.

Hop on the wagon train as they navigate the Oregon Trail from Missouri across the mid-1800’s landscape toward a free land grant and a new start in California. Along the way, you’ll fall in love with spunky, young, widow Naomi May, with her zest for life and creative spirit, as well and the stoic, practical, muleteer John Lowry who’s looking to strike out on his own for the first time. Not to mention the rest of the May family with its passel of sons, Naomi’s quirky former in-laws, and a whole gaggle of personalities bumping along together in the wagon train.

This wouldn’t be yarn about the Oregon Trail, however, without danger around every river bend – imperilment from wild animals, clashes with a Native American tribe or two, and subversion by fellow pilgrims. Your heart will yearn for Naomi and John, who are inexplicably drawn to each other from their first meeting back in Missouri, and you’ll breathlessly read on to see if their budding attachment can survive the tests thrown at them by “the trail”.

Harmon is fairly solid at capturing the culture and language of 1850’s America, something she admits was a struggle for her and was at times very uncomfortable. I can say with confidence that she has hit the mark more squarely than any other modern author (1980’s or later) that I’ve encountered, a feat that is impressive, at the least. That said, while I do realize the challenges of the modern writer in today’s culture of hyper-presentism, the 21st Century feminist and racial outlooks did still bleed through from time to time. In that regard, I leave you with the thought-provoking words of the author herself from the Author’s Note on page 339: “I hope the reader will experience the story in the spirit it was written, recognizing that who we are is not who they were, and judging historical people by today’s standards prevents us from learning from them, from their mistakes and their triumphs. These people helped build the framework that we now stand on. We should be careful about burning it down.”

Where the Lost Wander is A Once Upon a Book Club section (May 2020). Harmon is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times bestselling author whose works have been published in 18 languages.

[techeditor_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Why don't authors of, especially, historical fiction put their "Notes" before, rather than after, the story? Most seem to follow some rule that author "Notes" go at the end.WHERE THE LOST WANDER follows that seeming rule. But I learned through experience to check the back of the book for "Notes" so learned right away that two characters in the book really did exist. Knowing this while I read it made the story more interesting.Most of WHERE THE LOST WANDER is about members of a wagon train headed west for California, told from the viewpoints of Naomi and John. Naomi is traveling with her family and one of the wagons; John, part White, part Indian, did not intend to go all the way to California but changes his mind. Naomi and John take turns telling the story of their trip, incidents that happen along the way. That is until their experiences are no longer with the wagon train.By the second half of WHERE THE LOST WANDER, Naomi and John have married. One of Naomi's little brothers accidentally kills an Indian. The Indians retaliate by attacking the wagon train and taking Naomi and her newborn baby brother prisoner. Now this book is more than just incidents.Will John be able to find Naomi? Can they get the baby back?

[beamis12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

4.5 Be still my heart! I adored this story about love and hardship on the Oregon trail. It's 1853 and wagons full of hardy, in some cases desperate, people and family headed West. The Mays were one such family, their daughter Naomi had been widowed and traveled with them. John Lowry was a half Pauite, whose mother as she was dying brought him to his white father to raise. The mules they train are renowned and fetch a hefty price. He originally is only planning to go so far and then turn back. His plans though will change when love comes aknockin.I enjoy reading about these men and women who risk everything for a new start. Such a rough and hazardous journey, yet so many went. I would probably have been one who says, just let me be, it's all good. So many deaths, from illness and starvation, Indian attacks and exhaustion. This book has it all, pain, love, Indian captives, and plucky characters a reader can't help but embrace. Naomi and John, such wonderful characters, couldn't help but root for them. Hope things would turn out well.In the authors note, Harmon tells us who and what this story was based on. So many people in this story were actual historic figures and yes, I admit it made the book even more special. I took to heart not just for this book but others I will read, this advice,"I hope the reader will experience the story in the spirit it was written, recognizing that who we are is not who they were, and judging historical people by today's standards prevents us from learning from them, from their mistakes and their triumphs."I did and I will. Terrific story, wise authors note.ARC from Netgalley.

[sdbookhound · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Where the Lost Wander is historical fiction written during the westward movement in American history. I have always been most fascinated by this time period and have personally traveled along the Platte River and into Wyoming following the trail described in this book. Having seen the terrain and the landmarks described in this book myself I was easily able to imagine the trials of the pioneers and their wagon train. The details of the book were well researched and written beautifully. The characters of John, Naomi, and the May family were believable and I was drawn into their struggles, sorrows, and joys. I commend the author for not shying away from the difficult topics and hardships that pioneers on the trails west faced, however these incidents will be difficult for some readers. I look forward to enthusiastically recommending this book and I give thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book and I am providing this, my unbiased review and opinion.