Thanks to Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, damaged female characters are taking over the world of literature. The latest to arrive on the scene is Nora Watts, and she is damaged in every sense of the word.

Nora grew up in a dysfunctional family. Following her father’s suicide, she and her younger sister were initially placed with their aunt, but then moved in and out of foster care. In her late teens, Nora joined the army but soon quit and found herself homeless. She tried to make a living by singing, but after one of her gigs, she was brutally raped and almost killed. After six months of being in a coma, she woke up to find out she was pregnant. She gave birth to a baby girl but immediately gave her up for adoption.

"THE LOST ONES is a magnificent character-driven novel that has the potential to be the start of a series, because so many facets of Nora’s past remain open and yearn to be resolved. Here’s hoping that will be the case!"

Although she hasn’t gotten her life fully back on track, when THE LOST ONES opens, Nora is an assistant to a journalist and his private investigator partner, and lives in the basement of the same building where she works. Her life is about to change one more time when the adoptive parents of her now-15-year-old daughter, Bonnie, call her to report that Bonnie is missing. Police decide not to investigate the case due to the teen’s history of running away. Nora should not care about the girl she gave up for adoption, but she does because she wants Bonnie to have a better life than she’s had. So Nora starts investigating, and what she discovers is pretty shocking.

The novel is told from Nora’s point of view, so readers gain full insight into her mindset and her struggles. She is damaged beyond repair, but in her life she still has people who care for her and want to help her in her crazy pursuit of the truth. Debut novelist Sheena Kamal touches upon everything that bothers Nora: being the birth parent of an adopted child, being the survivor of rape and having PTSD, being an alcoholic, being a foster child, and trying to fit into the world. Kamal also tackles some important issues in contemporary Canada (the book’s setting), such as race, immigration, terrorism, ecology and human greed. Furthermore, she examines the state of investigative journalism in the age of the internet and raises the question of how far a parent would and should go to save his or her child.

THE LOST ONES is a magnificent character-driven novel that has the potential to be the start of a series, because so many facets of Nora’s past remain open and yearn to be resolved. Here’s hoping that will be the case! I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy a good thriller with lots of twists and turns, and, of course, damaged characters.