At first glance, Kirsten Alexander’s debut novel, Lost Boy Found, is the story of a lost boy and the two mothers who try to lay claim to him. As one begins to delve deeper and deeper into the novel, one begins to realize that Lost Boy Found touches on topics of social prejudice that are as real as the story that first inspired this novel.

It all begins on a summer’s day in 1913, in a place called Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, where the aristocratic Davenports and their equally aristocratic friends spend a lazy afternoon lounging in the backyard of their summer home while the three Davenport children play too close to the woods. The calm of the afternoon then takes a turn when the youngest boy, Sonny Davenport, goes missing.

Police are deployed. The town of Half Moon Lake and its surroundings are turned inside out. The lake is scoured. Crocodiles are gutted. Yet, not a trace of the missing boy is found. Except for some small child-sized footprints near the train tracks, Sonny Davenport seems to have vanished into thin air. Mary and John Henry Davenport wish to leave no stone unturned, but as time keeps passing the sheriff must make the Davenports understand that he cannot keep his men searching forever.

Two years pass and a tramp, Gideon Wolf, is found along with a boy some swear in Sonny. The tramp is taken into custody as an investigation goes underway. Soon enough Grace Mills, a farm-working woman from a neighboring town, drops in claiming that the boy they say is Sonny is actually her son Ned. She says she allowed him to travel with Gideon when she needed someone to watch him while she recovered from giving birth to her second child. A legal battle ensues, in which both sides fight for custody of the boy as they each try to prove the boy belongs to them.

Alexander tells an engrossing story of the madness the loss of a child can bring. Yet, deeply embedded within it is the true theme of the story: power and money talk. From the very beginning, the Davenports are portrayed as entitled people who don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘no.’ If they want something, they get it. Even if that something is a boy they know very well is not their own.

What kind of people—Oh, but she knew. She’d known them all her life. She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have to bite her tongue, deny her needs, placate insecure people who held power over her, when she hadn’t had to hide her strength and lower her eyes. Restraint. Passivity. She’d behaved as they told her from the time she was a child: had been grateful, hadn’t fussed or taken more than she deserved. She’d labored for pittance and known none of life’s ease, while others were born on a mountain of gold. And now her son—her son—stolen. Who would design a world of such cruel unfairness? Who had deemed Mary more important than Grace?

Grace Mills never stands a chance of winning the trial as John Henry is willing to buy his way into getting his wife the child she so needs to fill the empty space her lost one left behind. Even when people rise up to help Grace Mills, their attempts are made futile, and the Davenports, with all their money and prestige, are able to spin the tale of the lost boy whichever way they want. Though one might like to close the book at the end and breathe a sigh that it’s only a work of fiction, Lost Boy Found is more than just the fictional retelling of a true story; it’s the crystal clear face of the greed-run, prejudiced world that we live in, even 100 years after the real story took place.

Lost Boy Found is absolutely unputdownable. Writing from an omnipresent POV, Alexander crawls under the skin of each character with ease. She shows us the world from the eyes of the most privileged as well as from the less fortunate. With patience and a particular talent for squeezing raw truth out of every scene, she develops the story as if it were entirely her own, all the while still working with material based on the real-life story.

With every chapter, the reader will find themselves sitting at the edge of their seats. Even if they are already familiar with the story. Every turn it takes makes for thought-provoking pauses. The characters and the reality they are based on will infuriate you (in the way that a good novel should) as you keep turning every page, hoping for just one small ounce of justice for those who so defiantly are willing to fight for the truth.