Lost and Found, Orson Scott Card

Sometimes when I don’t have time to get to the library I’ll read books on my phone. Which is great (except that I have to keep reminding my kids that I’m reading a book, not surfing the internet so that they don’t think that keeping your face glued to a screen is okay

for anything other than reading…). But I just don’t remember type I’ve read on a screen as well as I do paper and ink. So I was surprised the other day to find that I’d read this book a year ago and then completely forgotten about it!

When I think of Orson Scott Card, of course, sweeping sci-fi series come to mind. This is not a sci-fi series. It’s a standalone (as far as I can tell). And there are no dystopian governments, or Buggers. It’s just about a teenage boy, Ezekiel Bliss. The only thing strange about Ezekiel is that his mother died when he was four, and that he can tell when an item is missing, and who it belongs to, and he feels a compulsion to return it.

When he was younger, he’d return the things he found were lost, but they were so small, so insignificant to everyone else, that when he took them back to their owners, they would automatically assume he’d stolen them in the first place. Now after years of being misunderstood, everyone thinks he’s a thief, and he’s withdrawn, resentful, and friendless. He tells himself he’s okay with that, when two things happen. A girl forces her friendship on him, and a detective shows up at his door.

The girl, Beth, goes to his high school, but she looks like she’s eight—she has a mutation that means she’ll never grow properly, and she gets bullied. After observing what she calls Ezekiel’s “shunning bubble” of people avoiding him, she reasons that if she sticks close to him the bullies will stay away from her. Ezekiel thinks that he resents her disruption of his solitude, but he’s actually desperately lonely and they are soon good friends. When Beth finds out about his ability to not only know when something is lost, but to return it, she encourages him to investigate his “micropower” instead of hiding from it.

After dropping Beth off at her own house one day, Ezekiel meets a detective. For the first time in his memory a member of the police is not there to interrogate him. He asks Ezekiel to be part of an ongoing investigation into the kidnapping of a little girl. There’s a particularly vicious group of child pornographers who are known to be in the area, the detective is desperate enough that he’s willing to trust that Ezekiel is actually telling the truth about what he can do. Ezekiel turns the man down flat; he still doesn’t trust the police. But as Beth helps him explore his own power, he realizes he has a responsibility to do anything in his means to get the girl back.

A further note more focused on the author than the book: I’ve heard two primary complaints about Orson Scott Card. 1. He pushes Mormon values too overtly in his books. 2. He’s a chauvinist and only gives women bit parts or shows them as distinctly lesser than the men in the stories. As much as I loved Ender’s Game and Xenocide, there is a small element of truth to those accusations

But!

 Lost and Found is not one of those books on either count. The fantastic element is confined entirely to Ezekiel’s “micropower.” I like the more mundane setting, and I also have a soft spot for (apparently) useless superpowers. So no planet population is involved. (When your religion teaches that you will become gods and populate planets, and your plotlines tend to revolve around highly advanced people populating planets, they start to feel a little bit less like sci-fi and more like Book of Mormon fanfic.)

This story also seems to have a decent complement of strong female characters, (in my opinion) so maybe it’s Card’s attempt to undo his chauvinist reputation. Though true to form, Ezekiel’s mother is dead and the main character is male. His friend Beth seems to be a well-rounded, independent, and resourceful young woman, and the other women in supporting roles do not strike me as caricatures.

So there’s that. It’s a good book!