Mama Cass aka Bookhugger asked Lisa Wingate:

The Book of Lost Friends is one of my all time favorite books. A subject I had never thought about once. What was your inspiration?

Lisa Wingate A reader friend directed me to the “Lost Friends” database, where I tumbled down a rabbit hole of lives long gone, stories and emotions and yearning
encapsulated in the faded, smudged type of old-time printing presses.
Names that survived perhaps nowhere beyond these desperate pleas
of formerly enslaved people, once written in makeshift classrooms, at
kitchen tables, and in church halls . . . then sent forth on steam trains and
mail wagons, on riverboats and in the saddlebags of rural mail carriers,
destined for the remote outposts of a growing country. Far and wide, the
missives journeyed, carried on wings of hope after being printed in a Methodist newspaper that was read from pulpits all over the country. Former slaves were seeking their family members and some were actually reunited.

You can read more detail and see some of the original ads on my website. Just go to the For Book Clubs page and see the resources and interviews for this book.

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