Holly Goldberg Sloan’s Finding Lost is a quiet, luminous story about grief, growth, and the dog who helps make it all possible.
When we meet Cordelia “Cordy” Jenkins, she’s a twelve-year-old adrift. Two years after her father’s death at sea, her family has traded their home for a weathered boathouse on the Oregon coast. Her mom works double shifts, her brother hides in headphones, and Cordy—who once loved the ocean—can barely bring herself to look at it.
Then, one day, a dog shows up.
He’s scruffy. His breath is terrible. He’s definitely not the kind of perfect, cinematic rescue that changes everything overnight. But Cordy names him Lost, and that small act—of claiming, of seeing—sets something gentle but irreversible in motion.
Finding Lost by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Finding Lost isn’t a story about a dog so much as it is a story about what a dog makes possible. Lost arrives at a moment when Cordy has stopped believing things can get better, and his unassuming presence gives her a way to start again. As she learns to care for him (and for herself), Sloan quietly shows how healing rarely looks like a single epiphany—it’s slow, messy, and full of everyday acts of love.
The Oregon coast setting hums beneath everything: the tides, the rain, the sense that the world keeps moving even when we can’t. There are crabs shedding shells, a rare pink dolphin sighting, and neighbors who show up in small, steady ways—a veterinarian named Taj, a librarian with the perfect backpack for Cordy’s next chapter.
Holly Goldberg Sloan has built a career on stories that find extraordinary grace in ordinary heartbreak. She’s the author of Counting by 7s (a beloved tale of a gifted girl rebuilding her life after loss) and Short, among others. Her books tend to center on young people navigating grief, difference, and connection—always with warmth, never with sentimentality.
Why Finding Lost Works (Especially for Dog People)
- The dog is real. Lost isn’t magic or overly anthropomorphized. He’s nervous, loyal, imperfect—and somehow that makes him all the more healing. Sloan gets the quiet truth right: sometimes just feeding, walking, or looking into a dog’s eyes is enough to start stitching yourself back together.
- It honors grief without drowning in it. This isn’t a heavy book; it’s tender. The sadness feels lived-in, not performative. The adults are fallible but kind. The moments of connection feel earned.
- It understands how animals change families. Lost doesn’t solve Cordy’s problems. He softens them—just enough for the people around her to find their way back to each other.
Dogish Takeaway
For readers who loved Because of Winn-Dixie or A Dog’s Purpose, Finding Lost lands in that same heart-forward space—honest about how hard life can be, but luminous about what love can rebuild.
It’s a middle-grade novel, but the writing is graceful enough for adults to feel it too. Whether you’re 12 or 42, if you’ve ever looked at your dog and thought, You saved me a little, this story will find you.
