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A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction
by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The breakout novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Collector, What She Left Behind weaves together riveting stories of past and present, exploring the strength of women in two different times as they face adversity in two very different ways. Go inside the horrifying walls of a 1920s New York asylum as a wrongly imprisoned woman fights for what is most important to her—and meet the young woman confronting the pain and mystery of her own family's mental illness two generations later.
Ten years ago, Izzy Stone's mother fatally shot her father while he slept. Devastated by her mother's apparent insanity, Izzy, now seventeen, refuses to visit her in prison. But her new foster parents, employees at the local museum, have enlisted Izzy's help in cataloging items at a long-shuttered state asylum. There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past.
Young flapper and suffragette Clara Cartwright is caught between her overbearing parents and her desire to be a modern woman. Furious when she rejects an arranged marriage, instead finding love with an Italian Immigrant, Clara's father sends her to a genteel home for nervous invalids. But when his fortune is lost in the stock market crash of 1929, he can no longer afford her care—and Clara is committed to the public asylum.
Even as Izzy deals with the challenges of yet another new beginning, Clara's story keeps drawing her into the past. If Clara was never really mentally ill, could something else explain her own mother's violent act? Piecing together Clara's fate compels Izzy to re-examine her own choices—with shocking and unexpected results.
BookBrowsers ask Ellen Marie Wiseman
Yes, they're all stand alones. If readers are interested in WWII, which I realize some are not, I'd say start with THE PLUM TREE. Otherwise, WHAT SHE LEFT BEHIND seems to be a favorite. It's based on Willard State Asylum and the 425 suitcases left behind by the patients who checked into the insti...
-Ellen_W
What are you reading this week? (8/28/2025)
After reading The Lies They Told I read another book written by Ellen Marie Wiseman. — What She Left Behind. Another tragic story of parents falsely admitting their daughter in 1929 to a state mental hospital because they disapproved of the man the daughter loved. The book emphasizes the horrifyi...
-Lynne_G
What book or books are you reading this week? (01/23/2025)
..., Frozen River. It is a very compelling read, but has caused me to become infuriated at the treatment of women across time. Several years ago, I read What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman; that historical novel had the same effect on me,
-Jackie_Dupey
"Give this to students interested in history, psychology, and a great coming-of-age story." —School Library Journal
"This amazing book tells the stories of two women divided by many decades, both facing overwhelming odds. The stories are told in alternating chapters, but these stories, despite their great differences, have similarities and are destined to come together. A great read!" —The San Francisco Book Review
This information about What She Left Behind was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ellen Marie Wiseman is the New York Times bestselling author of highly acclaimed historical fiction novels The Orphan Collector, What She Left Behind, The Plum Tree, Coal River and The Life She Was Given, which was a Great Group Reads selection of the Women's National Book Association and National Reading Group Month. Born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in Northern New York, she's a first-generation German American who discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in New York State. Since then, her novels have been translated into eighteen languages and published worldwide. A mother of two, Ellen lives on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband and dogs. She can be found online at: EllenMarieWiseman.com
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