“Unraveling Secrets of the Heart: Deborah Derrickson Kossmann’s Journey in ‘Lost Found Kept’ Reveals the Power of Redemption”
LL: I loved the writing style of this memoir, the way you were able to embody your younger self and tell some of the earlier sections from a child’s point of view. Can you talk about how you developed this voice, if it was your intention all along, or if it arose organically?
DDK: It was critical to the narrative to capture what it was like to be a child and experience what I did. Children know far more than we give them credit for. I wanted to invite readers to feel the powerlessness and confusion of that age. I also wanted them to remember what it is like to have an incomplete intellectual understanding, but the emotional knowing that many of us experience when we are younger. It was organic. I’d written about some of these events in the past—in my poetry and in other unpublished work. The technical risk is that using a child’s voice can put readers off if the writer’s focus isn’t laser sharp. By choosing the descriptions of behaviors and interactions I did, I hoped to give readers more than just the child’s perspective, so they could apply the adult filter of understanding to what the child is talking about. I suppose, by writing that way, I was also giving myself the validation and respect my mother couldn’t do during those events when I was growing up.
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