The Lovely and the Lost

After years of living in the wild, a teenage girl leads her adoptive family's search-and-rescue operation -- but to find a missing child, she must uncover long-buried secrets from her past.

Kira Bennett's earliest memories are of living alone and wild in the woods. She has no idea how long she was on her own or what she had to do to survive, but she remembers the moment that Cady Bennett and one of her search-and-rescue dogs found her. Adopted into the Bennett family, Kira still struggles with human interaction years later, but she excels at the family business: search and rescue. Together with Cady's son, Jude, and their neighbor, Free, Kira works alongside Cady to train the world's most elite search-and-rescue dogs. Someday, all three teenagers hope to put their skills to use, finding the lost and bringing them home.

When Cady's estranged father, the enigmatic Bales Bennett, tracks his daughter down and asks for her help in locating a missing child -- one of several visitors who has disappeared in the Sierra Glades National Park in the past twelve months -- the teens find themselves on the front lines sooner than they could have ever expected. As the search through seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of unbridled wilderness intensifies, Kira becomes obsessed with finding the missing child. She knows all too well what it's like to be lost in the wilderness, fighting for survival, alone.

But this case isn't simple. There is more afoot than a single missing girl, and Kira's memories threaten to overwhelm her at every turn. As the danger mounts and long-held family secrets come to light, Kira is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her adopted family, her true nature, and her past.

Genre: Young Adult Fiction

"Knife-edged suspense, a fantastic, plot, and authentic characters--both human and canine. The Lovely and the Lost grips you from the first page and holds you until the very end." - Allison Brennan

"A propulsive mystery-thriller about the dark things that happen in the woods. The Lovely and the Lost makes you feel the urgency of a search ad rescue, while laying the clues for a twisted crime. You will cling to this book until you reach the end." - Maureen Johnson

"With brilliant characters and a jaw-dropping mystery, Jennifer Lynn Barnes weaves a thriller as majestic and dangerous as the national park she used for the setting." - E K Johnston