About this item
Half a million copies sold! 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. "Screams with authenticity, depth, and understanding." —The New York Journal of Books "A real page turner...will appeal to all readers of fiction." —The Historical Novels Review "Amazing...A great read!" —The San Francisco Book Review "Will both haunt and inspire you... a moving, and at times chilling story that totally endears you to her characters." —SpaWeek "A great coming-of-age story." —School Library Journal
About the Author
A first-generation German American, Ellen Marie Wiseman discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in NYS. She is a New York Times bestselling author whose novels have been translated into twenty languages. Her debut novel, THE PLUM TREE, is loosely based on her mother's stories about growing up in Germany during the chaos of WWII. Bookbub named THE PLUM TREE One of Thirteen Books To Read if You Loved ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE. Ellen's second novel, WHAT SHE LEFT BEHIND, was named a Huffington Post Best Books of Summer 2015. Her third novel, COAL RIVER, was called "one of the most "unputdownable" books of 2015" by The Historical Novel Review. THE LIFE SHE WAS GIVEN, was named A GREAT GROUP READS Selection of the Women's National Book Association and National Reading Group Month and a Best Book of the Month. THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR was an instant New York Times Bestseller. Ellen lives on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband and a spoiled Shih-tzu named Izzy. When she's not busy writing, she loves spending time with her children and grandchildren. Find Ellen on Facebook at: www.Facebook.com/EllenMarieWisemanAuthor
