The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan

Hogan's debut novel was the March selection for the Inspired by Reading book club. It's the story of a man who collected and stored all the lost things he found throughout his life, in an attempt to compensate for the treasured item he himself lost long ago, and his personal assistant who's tasked with figuring out how to return as many items as possible to their original owners. The assistant herself is a bit lost, struggling to restart her life after the end of her disappointing marriage.

I liked the concept of the story quite a bit -- I am a bit of a magpie myself, and the brief stories associated with the items were fascinating. I also greatly appreciated the fact that Sunshine, a young woman with Down Syndrome, was a character with her own role in the story rather than an object lesson in tolerance for the protagonists.  But there was also a fair amount of uncertainty in Hogan's writing, perhaps because it is her first book. She didn't seem to quite know how much of a supernatural element to add to the narrative, and she wavered between showing the two antagonists as cartoonish villains and deeply flawed humans.

On to the jewelry! I was tempted to make a little mixed media work of the different stories in the novel, but I simply didn't have time. The image of the lost blue button stuck in my mind, however (probably because I love buttons), and I soon remembered I had a silver puzzle piece charm in my stash -- a fitting symbol for both the actual puzzle piece in the story and the mystery of the lost things in general. I added a Venetian glass bead reminiscent of the roses that recur throughout the book. I strung the resulting bundle on pink leather cord.

I'm now kind of wishing I had strung a silver bead or two on each side of the charm bundle, but it's too late now! Maybe I'll come up with something else I can attach.