Sara Zarr, ONCE WAS LOST young adult novelist: Mr. Media Radio Interview

Once Was Lost young adult novelist Sara Zarr is Mr. Media’s first three-time guest!

Sara Zarr has appeared on Mr. Media Radio to discuss each of her young adult novels (Story of a Girl, Sweethearts) and will be the first guest to return for a third visit.

Here’s how Sara explained the new story in a recent blog entry:

“A few years after I moved to Salt Lake City, a girl named Elizabeth Smart—who lived more or less in my neighborhood—was kidnapped. You probably remember. At the time, I worked at a church, and had no car, and it was hot, hot summer. Like everyone in Utah back then, I obsessively followed the case and watched the news. I’d walk to work in the heat and think about Elizabeth and imagine what it would be like to be a teen girl in Salt Lake right then. A story started to form on those walks to work. It existed in numerous forms before it became Once Was Lost, in which we see this local crime through the eyes of a pastor’s daughter, Sam, who is already in the midst of a crisis of faith.

“My faith is still important to me, and I’ve long wanted to write a YA novel that involved a character with a sincere but conflicted religious faith. That’s how I usually feel: sincere but conflicted. So, in some ways Once Was Lost is about faith. In some ways it’s a mystery. But, at its heart, it’s about what all my books are about: family, identity, and growing up.”

More Mr. Media interviews with Sara Zarr:
Story of a Girl
Sweethearts