Boy, Lost

by Kristina Olsson

Kristina Olsson’s mother lost her infant son, Peter, when he was snatched from her arms at a train station in the hot summer of 1950. She was young and frightened, trying to escape a brutal marriage, and in no way prepared for this final blow. Yvonne would not see her son again for nearly 40 years. Kristina was the first child of her mother’s subsequent marriage and, like her siblings, grew up unaware of the reasons behind her mother’s sorrow, though Peter’s absence resounded through the family. Yvonne dreamt of her son by day and by night, while Peter grew up a thousand miles away, dreaming of his missing mother. The family memoir Boy, Lost tells how their lives proceeded from that shattering moment, the grief and shame that stalked them, what they lost and what they salvaged. It is the story of a family, the cascade of grief and guilt through generations, and the endurance of memory and faith.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Book Club, Biography Memoir, Australia, Family

294 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Calzean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my Number One book I have read this year.
Beautifully and sensitively written. Extremely sad but does show the love and strength in the family.
Yvonne is 16 years old. It is 1950. She meets and marries a handsome 34 year old Greek. They move from Brisbane to Cairns where she is abused, worked as a slave and is malnourished. She attempts to flee with her 18 month old son. While sitting in a train ready to leave her husband steals her son from her. That's the last she sees of them for 35 years.
The book then traces the life of Yvonne and Peter the son. Peter's life is brutal, unloved and from the age of six he is trying to escape. His tale is terrible, lonely and he is faced with polio, sexually molestation and a series of institutions.
But what makes this book so powerful is the book is written by Yvonne's daughter whose writing and use of words is a rare gift that she has been able to give the reader, Peter and their mother.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have just finished this beautiful book. Blown away by the powerful story at its heart, by the author's honesty and by the exquisite writing. I can't recommend it too highly.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kristina Olsson was one of my tutors at QUT for much of 2011. Occasionally, she shared the heartache she was going through in writing this memoir, and that heartache is crystal clear in the writing. A beautifully crafted memoir of what must have been an emotionally distressing and difficult tale to tell when the author is so close to it all. Olsson says as much:
“The only safe way in was as a journalist, objective, writing in
the third person. I’d been doing that for years. But outcomes in writing are never neat or predictable, I should have known that.”
"Boy, Lost" is worthy of every prize that comes its way. The cover is haunting, but doesn’t do justice to the story’s overreaching and aching sadness.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trust me - you simply MUST read this book. Unfortunately, the lacklustre title and ho-hum cover left this one languishing far too long in my teetering bedside table pile before I picked it up (with gritted teeth). How severely had I underestimated its promise! From the first words I was utterly enthralled. Twenty-two hours and a large box of tissues later I reached the final page and breathed again.

Olssen you must be Brisbane’s best-kept secret. You managed the perfect balance of vague childhood recollection, historical documents and detailed description, merged with impressions, evidence and memories from family members. What a daunting task you undertook to tell this story, which is so much a part of your own. You have weaved the threads of loss, grief, remembrance and hope so masterfully. This true account presents a powerful example of the far-reaching and shattering effects of early deprivation of love, belonging and acceptance in a child’s life.

One can only hope the process has brought to Peter some measure of reconciliation and peace. The devastating image of that little boy and his aching mother will stay with me for a very long time indeed.

[Alexandra Daw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writing. Favourite quote on page 159 " And how many children do you have? The betrayal of numbers, whatever her reply." Heartbreaking stuff.

[Jo Case · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly amazing book - sensitively told and beautifully written. A work of great love and deep empathy that seeks to explain and understand a tragic loss at the heart of the author's family. It draws poignant and sharp comparisons between the experience of this one family and of the many children stolen from their mothers in Australia at this time, asking how and why this was tolerated by the wider community.

Kristina Olsson's mother, Yvonne, married young, and recklessly, aged 16 and madly in love with a too-charming older man who whisked her from Brisbane to remote Cairns, where his true self was revealed. Selfish, controlling, a gambling addict and womanizer, he terrorized and beat his young wife. Worst of all, he stole their baby son, Peter, from her arms, as she tried to escape him by train, threatening to kill her and the boy if she followed him off the train.

Yvonne suffered from this loss the rest of her life, but was dissuaded by authorities from reclaiming her son, told he'd be better off with his father than with an unmarried waitress. The boy, Peter, was - of course - not better off. He, too, was terrorized by his father and spent his boyhood running away, searching for his mother, and in and out of institutions.

Olsson tells the parallel stories of Yvonne (reimagined and pieced together) and Peter (assembled with his help, and the help of teams of paperwork left by police, courts and social workers). She also tells the story of what happened when they finally found each other, late in life, and the impossibility of rewriting or erasing the past.

Yvonne is written as both steely and vulnerable, a woman who values - and embodies - stoic endurance.

This book is many things; one of those things is a tribute to ordinary, hardworking decency. These characters are flawed, they make mistakes, they come up against terrifying and daunting obstacles - but they keep going, keep trying to build the best lives they can and be the best people they can be, with what they've got.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heartbreaking memoir about a family with a missing piece. There's solace to be found in the life that Olsson's mother manages to piece together after her horrific first marriage and the loss of her first child, but it's riven through with sadness and regret. The ending felt a little rushed, and the author sweeps aside some potentially interesting post-reunion tensions between mother and son, but there's a terrific/awful story here that deserves a wide audience.

[Helen Stower · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful memoir told with clarity, sensitivity and honesty. It is the story of the author's mother, Yvonne, who falls for a handsome man, marries him and moves to Cairns, far away from her family. Her husband turns out to be a controlling, often violent gambler. Depleted of resources and terrorised by her husband, Yvonne attempts to escape and as she waits for the train to depart, her baby son, Peter, is snatched from her arms by her husband who threatens to kill her and the child if she attempts to return.

The story follows Yvonne's life after this event with her new family who live with the sadness of a "missing piece" and a mother who is lives with longing and grief for the boy stolen. The story also follows Peter's terrible childhood, growing up with a violent father, running away many times, living in delinquency and spending time in and out of institutions.

This is an amazing and beautifully told story of an ordinary Australian family who live with the agony of the tragically lost childhood of a son and brother. The book searches to make meaning from what happens and the resilience of this family and the boy at the heart of the story is inspiring.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the true story of the author's mother Yvonne, whose baby Peter was literally snatched from her arms by her husband as she was escaping his abuse to start a new life. She doesn't see her son for another 36 years.

The memoir follows, along parallel tracks, the subsequent lives of Yvonne and Peter - how Yvonne re-marries and starts a new family, all the while repressing her grief, while Peter has a heartbreakingly tragic childhood, yearning for his missing mother.

As is evident from the story, this book is about emotions - the whole gamut from guilt and grief to hope and love and everything in between. The author handles them beautifully, never becoming sentimental or mawkish, and she has a descriptive and lyrical style that's a delight to read. The parallel narrative of the lives of Yvonne and Peter works well and kept me engrossed. It's a poignant story that had me in tears when Yvonne and Peter finally reunite.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a sad, sad book. A mother has to leave her son behind, in a day and age when women couldn't leave their husbands and retain custody. When women had no rights whatsoever. Just a horrible story of lives lost and how adults remain broken with no love, comfort, and touch while young.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's rare when I cry in a book, and have my fingers crossed the whole way through. But this one I did!

[Ashleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://ashleighstonehewer.wix.com/the...


The front cover of Boy, Lost defines Kristina Olsson’s work as a “family memoir”. And it is. It tells of how a whole family is affected by the grief of one moment: a mother has to deal with the loss of a son who is stolen from her arms, a lost boy has to search for his stolen childhood, and a family has to live with the ghosts of that boy, lost, who haunts them.

But the devastating truth is that Boy, Lost tells the story of more than just one family. It tells the story of many families all over Australia, of children lost and stolen, and it is fed by the ghosts of an Australian history that is often forgotten. There is often a desire to ignore the mistakes of our past, but Boy, Lost refuses to let that happen; it draws the reader into the past, into the heart of the storm, and forces them to witness the truth of our past and the lies on which this country is built. There is no escaping it either because once you delve into Boy, Lost you are lost in its pages, trapped by both the poetic prose, which marches you forward through devastating acts and heartbreaking emotions, and a world that has been created in such a way that it feels real and inescapable.

Olsson succeeds in transporting a contemporary reader back to a time they might not know or remember; she recreates a history—and, for many, a reality—that seems to rise from the pages of the book. It is then that the reader cannot escape the reality of what they are reading: Boy, Lost “wasn’t a story” (220).

We are led to question in what kind of world can a lawyer tell a mother not to fight for her son? In what kind of world do people not help a frail and scared young woman whose son is being ripped from her arms? In what kind of world does a little boy get returned to a home that is not safe or healthy? We are so sucked into the book, trapped in it, that it is impossible for us to escape the truth: our world. It was in our world, in our country, in our home that these realities happened day in and day out, to families all over Australia, and Boy, Lost will not let us escape that again.

Boy, Lost is a family memoire. It is a memoire for all the children that have been lost and stolen, for all the parents who have lost and been stolen from, and for all the remaining family members who were left, as Kristina Olsson and her siblings were, to deal with the darkness buried behind the happiness of a good childhood with a grieving mother.

Olsson’s memoire frees her family from the ghost of a lost boy that had haunted them and from the grief that cascades down the generations; however, Peter’s reunion with his lost family “wasn’t even an ending” (220), because it is real life and that does not just end. Despite that, Boy, Lost leaves us with that hope that if the memoire is not an ending, perhaps it could be a beginning where there is a new boy, a new man, waiting to be found.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kristina Olsson's book is an absorbing read with many emotional layers. It is a non-fiction tale of her mother's lost son who was snatched from her hands by her abusive husband as she was boarding a train to escape home. The loss of her son reverberates across many generations and leaves a permanent scar on son and mother. It is rare to read a book that describes Queensland and Brisbane with such detail and I learnt that Stone's Corner was named after Kristina's great grandfather.

[Yasu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful.

[Caren · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 rating)
I was struck by the brilliant writing of this Australian author in "Shell" (2019) and similarly magnetised by her 2013 award-winning family memoir, "Boy, Lost". Unputdownable! Olsson presents the story of her mother's grief at having had her infant son stolen from her on a train in 1950 by his abusive father as she attempted to escape his violence. In writing about her mother's early life, the author acknowledges in the Afterword that the grief had ultimately touched the entire family throughout the following decades, manifested by the "prohibitions and the secrecy of our lives, our mother's vetoes and bans. That was the shape in the silence."

Once the silence is broken, the lost mother and son reunited, Olsson places the injustice of the son's abduction and his subsequent life of abuse and institutionalisation in the context of the "Forgotten Australians" of that era: children removed from their mothers with no one or authority or agency to rescue them. The memoir is as much a record of the mother's tragic past and resilient attempt to rebuild her own life as it is a condemnation of the "system" that thrust her son, Peter, into a life on the street, periodically sent into children's detention homes where, at least, he was afforded some order in his life.

The strength of the memoir is in its straightforward portrayal of the dimensions of grief and endurance within this family. There is a sense that the author found "acceptance and contentment" through the breaking of the silence that had haunted her mother for nearly 50 years.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whichever way you look at it, this is a terrible story. It could be told in the form of a Greek tragedy or a Norse saga, reflecting the backgrounds of the two fathers of Yvonne’s children. Olsson has chosen to write a memoir. It is a tricky task - trying not just to tell her own story, but those of her mother and ‘lost’ brother.

“Slowly, I began to see that the events that ruled my mother’s life, though hidden to me, had also ruled mine. That I too was stuck, we all were stuck, at the instant Peter disappeared. We were born into the grief of it, the shock of it, and how could any of us have known? Even our mother hadn’t known, as her arms emptied on that morning in 1950, that this moment was a fine sharp point on which all our lives would turn: hers, Peter’s, my own father’s, those of us yet unborn.”

It is powerfully written, and succeeds in conveying the ripple effect of the kidnapping of the baby Peter on future children, relationships and families. It is a full-blown tragedy.

While I appreciate the association with the Stolen Generation, made so forcefully in the final chapter, I was left wanting more of a discussion about a society in which individual men exercise ownership over, and violence towards, children (and women).

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy, Lost by award winning author Kristina Olsson, is a heartbreakingly beautiful tale of a broken family, a lost childhood, and the consequences that followed to the next generations. It is all the more poignant because it is true. This non-fiction memoir tells the story of Kristina's brother - a boy truly lost. First snatched from his mother's arms on a train as she attempted to flee a violent marriage, he endured not only the loss of his mother but survived an isolating illness and a fractured childhood. The novel sheds light on the effect of Peter's absence from their new family once their mother remarried, and how they managed to salvage their relationships and cobble together a different version of family once they were adults. There is much pain in this story, but also much joy, and Kris evokes both with tenderness and empathy.

[Barbara Rohde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written beautifully with exquisite empathy for all involved, this is the story of Kristina Olsson's mother and how she overcame a dreadful first marriage to go onto making another more fulfilling life for herself and her family. But it's also the tragic story of her son Peter by her first marriage who was snatched from her as she boarded a train. However Peter is a survivor despite his considerable damage. I loved the rendering of this story which is woven together from disparate threads to make a satisfying yet delicate fabric.

[Sarah Pollard Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly heartbreaking. A very warm telling of the abduction of Olsson's older brother and the life-long impact this had on ALL the family, including the subsequent siblings from a second marriage. I just so wanted a happy ending, and while there is a conclusion, it's not really happy. Olsson is generous in her acknowledgement of the damage that forced removal of children does to individuals and families, and we need to be mindful of that in our political landscape. Gripping, but devastating, and beautifully written.

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I too have a family story of a boy, lost - which made reading this memoir a heightened experience. I was often both in the story and above it. As I turned each page I simultaneously absorbed the story and dissected the construction and writing, trying to understand how a writer can put the pain and memories of other people into words on paper and it be so compelling, honest and beautiful. One day, I would like to try to tell my story, I just hope I can do it with even a small measure of the skill, love, and insight of Kristina Olssson.

[Jenny Esots · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a fan of the genre of memoir that not only provides an outline of life, but also the times.
This is a profound tale of loss and absence.
A mother's son is torn from her arms and neither of them ever get over it.
Kristina Olson writes perceptively, moving within the mindfield of family emotions and grief.
I was pleased to see a photo of Yvonne included, but would have liked more photos. Kristina was in fine journalistic mode in describing them, but image would lift the story.

[Päivi Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very moving.

[Ruth Bonetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poignant, beautifully written book is one of my most memorable of the year’s reading. I was totally engrossed by the pain expressed in evocative writing.
So, imagine being lured into an abusive marriage, albeit willingly but blindly. Then stuck, trapped. Imagine a child wrenched from one’s arms at a train station. Imagine carrying that loss for decades, while making a brave face for subsequent children. Imagine how suppressed heartbreak inevitably erupts in unexplained outbreaks.
The lost boy is felled by polio, stepmother and father brutality, institutional “care.” He repeatedly runs away, choosing to live homeless under Sydney harbour bridge, abused in return for some creature comforts.
And yet he survives. Marries, fathers a daughter, makes a living. When he makes contact with his birth family, we hope for the best.
Mother and son, reunited, tread conflicting emotions.
“The runaway train of her past has come roaring towards her in the shape of her lost son, and without warning – though of course, like him, she has been preparing for this day since he disappeared. Now that he has found her, that’s all she can see, those long years of not looking, the countless days he’s had to wonder why she hasn’t.”
Both mother and son carry decades’ baggage, so their happy ending flounders. Olsson shares deeply layered realisations of just how wide a gulf must be crossed to reconciliation; how the hurts permeate; the toll grief and guilt take. Self recriminations.
“A good woman would have held on tighter. Her blood beating shame and deficiency to her heart every day. So when her blood literally turns against her, when her cells turn on each other, the white lazily devouring the red, there is a part of her that isn’t surprised. Leukaemia, the doctor says, and that part of her receives it as her due.”
And the son Peter shares similar:
“Fifty years before, he hadn’t held on hard enough.…The man in him knows [that], but the boy in him wins. He picks up his belongings and his child like heart and drives towards his mother.”
Olsson demonstrates how deeply secrets, separation and loss have cut into relationships between siblings, generations.
Yvonne’s daughter Sharon asks her grandmother “What was my real father like?”
“She watches at her grandmother plunges a knife through the Queensland Blue. There is a crack as the pumpkin’s thick skin gives beneath the blade. A mongrel. A wedge of creamy yellow pumpkin falls from the whole.”...”She would never forget the images that fell from the crescents of pumpkin, and always she will see the word bastard in startling yellow.”
This is a moving and thought provoking book that resonates long after the last page.

[Philip Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The amazing aspect of this book is the depths to which the author explores the minds of her characters. She relates so much of what is going on the head and heart of each person, that I began to wonder if I was reading a novel. Indeed, Kristina Olsson would forgive me, I hope, for thinking she was making it up. But towards the end of this family memoir, we glean a little of the many hours she has spent with each person, undoubtedly probing and feeding back what she was hearing. As a result we have profundity as well as drama. The story is titled "Boy, Lost" but its span is much wider. A memorable read.

[Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heard about this book on the radio and new immediately I wanted to read it. The story was very sad but I seem to like this kind of book.

Set in Brisbane, Yvonne is the eldest child from a poor working class family in the 1950's. She marries Michael a greek man who is 34 when she is 18 and pregnant. Michael is a gambler, illiterate and beats his wife. He also takes their first born and threatens to kill her when Yvonne tries to leave him.

Yvonne eventually marries Arne a swedish man and makes a new life but never forgets Peter her first born son.

[Meredith Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Boy, Lost” is a powerful family memoir about an infant son taken in away from a young and frightened mother in 1950. While there is violence and cruelty within the grief-filled narrative, it is also the story of a family. It is a beautifully crafted story, especially in Olsson’s descriptive writing, with her words evoking a strong sense of place in its descriptions of summer in North Queensland and alike.

[Lyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing story! It is sad that the events in this book happened, from Peter's abduction by his father, his subsequent mistreatment, and Yvonne's powerlessness to do much about it. The portrayal of Yvonne was sensitive and caring, it must be hard to write about your mother. Above all, despite everything, there was a sense of hope and the value of family and love. A marvellous read, with the 2023 version giving an update on the family members ten years on.

[Jan Tisdale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mother lost her son when her abusive husband snatched baby from her arms as she was leaving in 1950. She would not see her son in 40 yrs. The son dreamed about his mother all those years.

“ poor Peter, in every way he was the most abused and sad situation. I can’t imagine the mom, what she went through, the heartbreak.
Her husband was a horrible person.
The writer writes a bit strange and didn’t think I would like book at first but it was worth the read”.

[Kerry Rasmussen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of courage. Both in the living and writing of it!

A story of sadness and triumph told in a way that brings great sadness and despair as it causes you to reflect on your own past and family story. Thank you for sharing. Truly an inspiration. I feel sad I didn’t get to know your mum, she is truly one to admire.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful, emotional and endlessly insightful family saga. A perfect demonstration of the ripple effect of past traumas (individual and collective) through generations. Can we ever really put the past behind us?