Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst

From the back cover: "Laura is awakened in the middle of the night by her teenage daughter, who has barely spoken a word to her in months. Following Cassie up to her attic room, Laura discovers her daughter's shocking secret - and moves quickly to try to set things right.
The rift between mother and daughter will soon be played out on a global scale, when - in the hope that time spent together will heal their relationship - Laura and Cassie join a motley group of contestants on a reality TV show. What starts as a lark turns deadly serious when the show's creators scheme to reveal the most intimate details of the players' lives. The question becomes not just who will capture the million-dollar prize, but at what cost."

Some of you may recognize this author's name from her previous work The Dogs of Babel, a serious, dark and disturbing book about suicide, love and bizarre language testing on dogs. This book is nothing like that one, in fact one would almost question if it is really the same author even though it says so right on the cover. I guess as readers we expect our authors to maintain a certain continuity in their work. Janet Fitch did it with White Oleander and Paint it Black, Jean Hegland did it with Into the Forest and Windfalls, there aren't any huge surprises in the writing from Jodi Picoult or Amy Tan. This book, however, was shocking as a follow up to Parkhurst's first work because it was so incredibly different.

The surprise aside, it turned out to be a very good book. Each chapter was from the viewpoint of a different character and she did a good job of keeping each character's voice separate and distinct (although I really did like how Picoult gave each of her characters their own font in My Sister's Keeper). This book is really about the secrets we keep and how, big or little, we all have them. It is an interesting, thought-provoking book in an easy-to-read little package.

On a side note: There is a previously gay couple in the story (this doesn't give anything away) and by that I mean one man and one women who each used to be gay but who turned away from their lifestyle with help from a christian organization and married each other. I don't know, I just feel inundated with gayness lately. It seems everywhere I turn there is a commercial, a TV show, a book, an article that has hopped aboard the gay-train. Not only that but they all seem to christian-bash at the same time. It bothers me because: 1) I can't seem to get away from it and 2) they (the gay community, Hollywood, the media, etc.) are forcing me to think about something that I previously thought little about. While I can be opinionated about myself, my own life, family, and beliefs, I really am mostly a live-and-let-live kind of person. But now I am having this "lifestyle" rammed down my throat everyday and it's kind-of pissing me off. Thoughts?