The Lost Story: A Novel

Jeremy, also known as “Jay” and “Sir Jeremy, the Red Knight of Shanandoah” (81, 422), is one of the novel’s four protagonists. He is over six feet tall and has red hair and hazel eyes, “like a summer forest” (421). Though Jeremy presents a non-nonsense front to the world as a famous rescue expert, Emilie notes that his real self is brash, friendly, and witty. Jeremy dresses like a “hip young rock climber” and is interviewed often in his line of work (422). 

In his career, Jeremy has rescued 50 missing women and 14 bodies. He is described as having a knack for finding the missing, even in “harsh climates, in unforgiving landscapes” (17). This uncanny knack is actually a gift from Skya, meant to aid Jeremy in his quest for Emilie. The fact that Jeremy puts it to use to help families, even after Emilie is found, shows Jeremy’s generosity of spirit. Another example of this generosity is teenage Jeremy’s treatment of Rafe. Jeremy immediately grasped Rafe’s artistic talent and encouraged him, providing Rafe with a safe space in his own home to practice art. Similarly, he encourages Emilie to accept the fact that she, too, is brave. Jeremy thus has a knack for drawing out the best in people.

Though people, such as Bill, sometimes read Jeremy as the stereotype of a spoiled rich boy, Jeremy has experienced his share of trauma even before getting lost in Red Crow. Jeremy’s father, Thomas Cox, died before Jeremy was born. At the funeral of Dr. Mary Cox, his mother, Jeremy discovered that his father dealt with schizophrenia. This further traumatized Jeremy, as he briefly believed that he may have inherited the condition and that Shanandoah was a hallucination. In Ghost Town, the Bright Boys seize on Jeremy’s unprocessed grief about his father and appear to him as a taunting Thomas, blaming Jeremy for his death by suicide. Loss has been a constant in Jeremy’s life since he also lost Shanandoah and did not meet Rafe again for 15 years. Mary also died before Jeremy was 30. 

Despite the losses, Jeremy stays focused and dynamic, coping with the world with an irreverent sense of humor. An example of Jeremy’s humor is him describing his pansexual identity through the metaphor of a T-shirt, which fits everyone and is always on top. Although both Rafe and Emilie fit the Holy Grail of Jeremy’s quest, in the process of finding them, Jeremy learns that he can live meaningfully in a world without magic. At the end of the novel, Jeremy accepts this lesson and finds peace with Rafe and his rescue work. Jeremy is thus a round character with an evolving character arc.

One of the novel’s protagonists, 23-year-old Emilie is a vet’s technician who was fired from her job after she stole a rat to save it from being put down. Emilie adopted the rat, named it Fritz, and kept it in an enormous multi-tiered cage. Called “princess” by Jeremy and “brat” by Skya, Emilie represents the youngest-sister character of their friend group. She is analogous to Lucy Pevensie, the youngest sibling in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Emilie has blond hair and gray eyes and prefers to wear pink and red clothes and shoes. She also loves wearing Fleetwood Mac T-shirts. A huge fan of the musician Stevie Nicks, Emilie makes frequent references to her throughout the novel. Skya describes Emilie as beautiful. 

Emilie had a privileged, sheltered life with her mother, Theresa, growing up in a large house in Ohio. She was forced out of her comfort zone after Theresa died of breast cancer. Grieving over Theresa and yearning for family, Emilie got a DNA test and discovered her half-sister, Shannon. Shannon’s fate compels Emilie to seek out Jeremy, as she wants to do the right thing by her sister by finding her remains and burying her.

One of Emilie’s distinctive characteristics is that she feels nervous with silence and tends to talk continuously, often blurting out her thoughts. Another is her keen insight: She immediately picks up on the fact that Jeremy and Rafe are far more than best friends. Emilie has little interest in romantic matters herself, telling Jeremy that she has never dated in her life and that she is looking only for a family. Emilie’s quest may be for Skya’s sisterly love, but in the process, she must discover her own courage and resourcefulness. Emilie initially believes that she lacks bravery, turning to self-help books such as “Do You Dare—A Manual for Finding Your Courage” (47). 

Before heading to Shanandoah, she confides in Jeremy that she doesn’t think she would have survived the kidnapping attempt as Skya did. She believes that even if she managed to escape the kidnapper, she would have perished in the forest. Emilie wishes that, like Skya, she could “look death in the face and boop his nose” (123). Emilie has already displayed heroism in rescuing Fritz at the cost of her job but is yet unaware of her powers. 

In a crucial sequence in Ghost Town, Emilie stabs a Bright Boy to rescue Rafe, and as the creature dies, she taps his nose and says “boop” (360). Emilie finds the heroism that she always possessed, indicating she has a dynamic journey as a character. She chooses to remain with Skya in Shanandoah at the novel’s end, sending a message to Rafe and Jeremy to tell them that they will one day be reunited and that she will dance at their wedding.

Skya is the fourth protagonist of the novel and also its narrator. Described by Rafe as “more like a Roman goddess than a beauty queen” (424), Skya has blond hair and dove-gray eyes. When Emilie meets Skya, Skya wears her long hair in a braid and dresses in a soft tunic and leggings. In her queenly garb, Skya often wears a red gown; her crown is made of antlers. 

Skya was born when her mother was 14. It is implied that her mother was neglectful. After Emilie’s birth, Skya lived with her baby sister for a month until Emilie was put up for adoption. It is around this time that her teacher, Mrs. Adler, gave Skya’s fifth-grade class an assignment on fairy tales. Skya began her story, “The Nobody Queen” (52), on which Shanandoah is based. 

When Skya was 13, she was kidnapped after getting off her school bus. She escaped her kidnapper and landed in the very kingdom that her imagination had created. Born as Shannon, she renamed herself Skya, the queen of Shanandoah. Skya’s magical escape is a metaphor for the power of art and imagination. While the real world is a brutal place where parents beat children and children and women are kidnapped every day, stories offer a sanctuary of hope.

As Shannon, Skya shows great resilience, coping with her difficult home life and the separation from Emilie through immersing herself in writing. Emilie notes that Skya’s writing is prodigious since by the time she was 13, Skya had already created fantastical elements like the red crow Aurora, firemoths, and the Witch of Black Wolf Cave. Skya’s wisdom and resourcefulness blossom when she reached Shanandoah. Though the kingdom contains child-like features, such as rainbow sands and a palace that looks like a castle, Skya governs it with courage and intuition. When she confronts Bill, Skya tells him, “I give you one final chance to mend what you tore to pieces” (366). Watching her authority in action, Rafe notes that Skya really is a queen. 

Skya is also capable of deep love, instantly bonding with Emilie. She often lovingly calls Rafe “[her] prince” and Jeremy “[her] knight” (366). Skya, too, embarks on a quest at the end of the novel since she writes the lost story of Jeremy, Rafe, Emilie, and herself, indicating that the world she created is still ever evolving.

The antagonist of the novel, Bill, is Rafe’s father. In symbolic terms, Bill represents brutal authority and the old, restrictive order, which the hero must overthrow to create a new world. Rafe describes Bill as stern looking, forever dressed in his electrician’s uniform with the name tag sewed on. The worst aspects of Bill are his temper, controlling tendency, and violence. Enraged by Rafe’s love for art and Jeremy, Bill viciously beat up the 14-year-old boy. When Rafe returned with no memory of the beating, Bill did not remind him of what he did. He further blocked that memory by not letting Jeremy meet Rafe and making Rafe promise to never return to Red Crow. It is indicated that even Bill’s wife, Bobbi, is afraid of him.

Bill blames Jeremy for Rafe getting lost even though Bill is the reason why Rafe did not want to come home. Jeremy also notes that Bill always diminished Rafe’s achievements, such as convincing him that the perfect shot that Rafe made was off-center. So deep is Bill’s desire to control Rafe’s story that his spirit wanders to Ghost Town and has Rafe’s book of memories stolen. This symbolizes that Bill continues to control Rafe even from beyond the grave. 

Bill’s lowest point arrives when he threatens to torture Emilie so that Rafe will agree to destroy the book. However, Bill is not a wholly negative character. As Skya notes, he gives Emilie’s knife back to her rather than to a Bright Boy. This is why Skya grants him a last chance to make amends with Rafe. In the end, Bill saves the life of his son’s lover, showing that he has seized Skya’s last chance. This shows that Bill, too, has a dynamic journey as a character.