Sometimes reading a novel is like stumbling into the middle of relationship minefield: there are alliances you don’t know about, secrets buried, and silent pacts being held long after their usefulness wanes. In part, this was because I picked up The Lost Queen by Heidi von Palleske, without having read her first book, Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack, which is also the first in this story. But I’m not sure if it totally mattered: I did piece together much of the backstory fairly easily from the characters, and the story was interesting enough that the feeling of awkwardness for me dissipated quickly. Though I do think reading Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack would have made me more invested in the events of The Lost Queen, earlier on.
The book opens with a tragedy: Blanca and her twin sister Clara are at the airport. Then – Blanca wakes up, Clara nowhere in sight, and almost no information to tell her what might have happened. Eight years later, Clara is still missing, and the rest of her loved ones are still trying to piece together their lives without any kind of closure. But then Martina, Blanca’s partner, receives an opera in the mail that seems to tell the story of Clara, and indicate that she might in fact be alive.
This story shifts perspectives regularly: Martina; Esther, Blanca and Clara’s opera teacher; Gareth, Clara’s husband who declares her dead in absentia in the beginning of the novel; Iris, Clara’s daughter who is on the edge of thirteen and remembers only pieces of her mother; Jack, Gareth’s best friend; and Hilda, Jack’s mother. The possible resurgence of Clara will test them all, and indirectly influence other pivotal events in their lives.
Despite the intensity of events in a short period, the characters tend to narrate dispassionately. I found their remove from the story sometimes difficult to digest; other times, it made sense for a traumatized character to move in such a distant way. Due to the seriousness of most of the characters, Esther’s sister Bözsi is a light in the story, splashing her way through life and focused only on her own pleasure, in a way the rest of the characters never seem to have even considered. Iris was particularly tough: it was easy to imagine an adolescent girl, acting out and struggling, and alternating with keeping her feelings inside, but tough to reconcile that with a distant narration.
What did impress me about The Lost Queen was the fullness of the story. While looking for Clara was the central piece tying everything together, it wasn’t the only part of the story. There was a richness of every day life carrying on as it always had, even with the tragedy and hope that sat in the middle. It’s rare to read a story which manages to handle full lives like that, instead of focusing only on that which serves the primary story. Von Palleske never made the novel feel overburdened by all of this action either.
This was a complicated family saga, with a lot of moving pieces. Spanning continents, characters, languages, and more, there’s a little something for all kinds of readers in The Lost Queen.
Heidi von Palleske is a writer, actor, and activist. She has written poetry, articles, and fiction, and won the H.R. Percy Novel Prize for They Don’t Run Red Trains Anymore. Heidi spends time on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, but calls Toronto home.
Publisher: Dundurn Press (February 24, 2026)
Paperback 5.5″ x 8.5″ | 344 pages
ISBN: 9781459756915
Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
- Alison Manleyhttps://miramichireader.ca/author/alison-manley/
