Boy, Lost A family memoir (10th anniversary edition)

Kristina Olsson’ s mother lost her infant son, Peter, when he was snatched from her arms as she boarded a train in the hot summer of 1950. Young and frightened and trying to escape a brutal marriage, she was not prepared for this final blow, this breathtaking punishment. She would not see her son again for nearly forty years. Kristina was the first child of her mother’ s second, much gentler marriage and, like her siblings, grew up unaware of the reasons behind her mother’ s sorrow, though Peter’ s absence resounded through the family. Yvonne dreamt day and night of her son, while Peter grew up a thousand miles and a lifetime away, dreaming of his missing mother. Thirty-six years later he arrived at her front door. Boy, Lost tells an unforgettable story of the legacy of grief and loss across generations, and is a tribute to the power of memory and faith.

Kristina Olsson is the author of the novel In One Skin (2001) and the biography Kilroy Was Here (2005). Her journalism and non-fiction have been published in The Australian, The Courier-Mail, The Sydney Sunday Telegraph and Griffith Review. She has worked extensively as a teacher of creative writing and journalism at tertiary level and in the community, and as an advisor to government. She lives in Brisbane.