University of Iowa Press author Jeff Griffin's found objects turn into book

When University of Iowa Press author Jeff Griffin was growing up in Reno, Nevada, he and his family had an unusual pastime: they would drive into the desert and explore abandoned mining camps and ghost towns, looking for artifacts. Moving through these forgotten places had a great impact on Griffin: he wondered who had lived in these places, and why they'd left so suddenly.

As an adult, Griffin continued to retreat the desert, often driving for days to explore the most remote locations. As his editor explains in the afterward: “The desert remained a place of refuge for all manner of people who protected their isolation ... Most of the material he found was mundane - bills, magazines, junk mail, household garbage - but some of it was harrowing, poignant, and enigmatic.”

The book “Lost And” (University of Iowa Press, 170 pages, $20) is a collection of Griffin's findings - highly-personal items never intended for mass audiences. There are heartfelt poems about loneliness and suicide; long notes on court proceedings; a tragic correspondence between two people named Tony and Estee; and a series of odd photographs, including one where a smiling family cheerfully poses around a man in a coma.