Mark Connor went straight to Viet Nam from high school; there he found his best friend and lover, watched him die and came back a hero with a dead soul, a man who’d saved others and lost the one he loved, vilified by peaceniks and those who stayed behind. Josh Tyler was a Marine sergeant in Beirut when a barracks of marines died in a terrorist bombing. He survived and swore to honor his fellow soldiers by living life to its fullest. In the Outer Banks off Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, these two men meet in a determined and forceful confrontation.
When Mark is hired to renovate a vacation home into its owners’ retirement dream house, he decides he needs a helper for it’s a tremendous undertaking. The man he hires is Josh, who’s almost his exact opposite in temperament and outlook on life. Josh is also gay and doesn’t mind admitting it, unlike Mark who is still trapped in an era when such an confession would be tantamount to committing professional and physical suicide. It doesn’t take as long for Josh to see through Mark’s coldness and anger than it does for Mark to accept Josh’s carefree attitude. The two banter back and forth—an Odd Couple with a sharp edge--arguing and falling into an uneasy truce as they work.
Sensing Mark’s interest though the older man struggles to hide it, Josh also knows there is more pain and secrets he’s trying to hide, pain leading to the violent and heart-rending moments of flashbacks interrupting Mark’s sleep, when he awakes, screaming his lover’s name as he relives the moments of his death. Josh has his own times of pain but they are nothing compared to Mark’s and he resolves to help Mark through them…if he’ll only be allowed inside that circle of pain and memories. Time and again, the moment comes for Mark to let down his guard and tell John how he feels, and each time, he lets it pass.
And then a storm rolls in from the Atlantic, a winter nor’easter, bringing with it freezing winds, sleet and snow, and shutting down the island entirely, and Mark’s anger overflows and Josh’s bluff is called…
MY OPINION: Lost and Found is a story of two men from two eras of conflict, society’s reaction to their sexual orientations, as well as their own acceptance of it, and how they’ve emerged wounded and damaged into the present. It’s a short story but an extremely touching one, with immense emotion packed into its few pages. There’s surprising little actual sex in the story, characterization and plot here appearing more important. Mark’s disillusionment and desire to keep his memories alive are well contrasted with his dismay as he finds his attraction to Josh displacing those memories in his mind. Josh is portrayed as sympathetic to Mark’s situation but reveling in his own life, not afraid to face what comes and wanting Mark to learn to face it, too. Their mutual problems, frustrations, and memories are contrasted with the coldness of the North Carolina winter and the incoming storm which breaks onto the island just as their own emotions overflow.
Having once visit those same islands, I can appreciate the descriptions of them in winter…cold, bleak, freezing from the winds off the water and the isolation from the mainland. It’s a good metaphor for Mark’s own situation, and Josh’s own attempts to pierce the icy resolve around his heart.
(The copy of this novel was supplied by the author and no remuneration for the review was involved.)
