Create Space – 2016
I Once Was Lost, the third book in my Adirondack Trilogy, is the story of Jesse Tobias. Jesse has a gift – he knows things about dogs.
As a child, other children teased him and called him “dog-boy”. As an adult, he is one of the top search and rescue dog handlers and trainers in the country. He and his dogs find those who are lost, those who are injured, those who have been taken and those who are in danger. Ironically, in searching for others who are lost, Jesse comes to find himself: the truth about his life, about how he came to be abandoned at birth, about his parents, about his family. Most of all, in his own story he finds hope and encouragement for his future.
Here is a brief excerpt from I Once Was Lost:
“Near the end of the interview, the camera zoomed in, filling the screen with the director’s requested ‘money shot’. The extreme clos-up had become the trademark of Up Close and Personal; a shot so close viewers could count the freckles on [Jesse’s] cheek. However, counting freckles was not the point. The unstated, but accomplished, objective was to capture the first tear as it formed on his lower eye-lid and then slowly trickled down the side of his nose.
“I suppose it is ironic, isn’t it? I mean, what I do – searching for people who are lost and here I am, like some pathetic lost boy myself. I don’t know who my parents were, I have no family, and my best friend is my dog. I have a nice place to live, but it seems like I’m never there. We are on the road so much of the time, now, trying to help others find their way home that I’m seldom home myself. The Bible speaks of the blind leading the blind; I guess my version of that passage is ‘the lost seeking the lost’.
I’m not complaining; I’ve been blessed in so many ways. I do wonder, though, if my own story has something to do with why I do what I do. I wonder if helping others who are lost somehow makes up for being lost myself. Does that sound crazy?”
Suzanne Amodeo smiled a scripted smile as she brushed an unscripted tear from her own eye and shook her head, “No – that doesn’t sound crazy at all.”
