Love and death are the two vast concepts explored in often minute detail by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kathryn Schulz in her memoir, LOST & FOUND.

The book begins in the “Lost” realm that she inhabited after her father’s death. He was an immigrant orphaned by the horrific events in the Łódź Ghetto during its Nazi occupation, sent to Tel Aviv as a toddler, and eventually found a new life in the United States, owing very much to his strong spirit. As a child, Schulz learned from him how to speak hilarious, complicated English and, one suspects, how to spin winding, colorful yarns like the one she has constructed about him.

"It would be tough to find another book that so effectively combines the panoply of emotions examined here or that leaves the reader with such a sense of quiet comfort and natural, human connectedness."

With his passing, Schulz quickly began to grasp the meaning of loss, a “time of torpor and drift.” Like many afflicted by the near immobility of grief, she began “looking” for her father’s presence, perhaps hoping for some comforting, resolving vision. When that did not happen for her, she learned to exist with sadness, even at times fearing that she might lose her grief. She concludes that grief is common, immense and largely incurable. Yet she also knows that her father would have wished only happiness for her.

That philosophical stepping stone leads to her recollection of how she “Found” her new love, asserting that unanticipated finding is always a happy experience. That is the case when she agrees to meet C. for lunch. The two are immediately drawn to one another, sensing that rather than filling a missing portion of themselves in their new love, they had been “completely whole,” making their bonding one of equality and endurance. Like her, C. is a strong female and a writer; their being together feels wholly natural from the onset.

Schulz believes that the central characteristic of falling in love is “amazement.” As she recalls her experiences with C., she points out that no two people are “alike.” She and C. quarrel, often over the stupidest things, yet that divergence provides another example of their ability to sustain their relationship. They do not share religion, but nonetheless had a memorable, joyous wedding. Together, they are secure in their love and in the knowledge that one of them may someday have to live without the other --- yet another notably ordinary dilemma that all who love must face.

With quotations from a vast mine of sources --- including Roman mythology, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Plato and James Baldwin, to name just a few --- Schulz keeps her readers awake and alert to each small turn in this artfully grounded story. The final section, “And,” points towards next steps and the implications of the wisdom that “life goes on.” It would be tough to find another book that so effectively combines the panoply of emotions examined here or that leaves the reader with such a sense of quiet comfort and natural, human connectedness.