What She Left Behind

Name: What She Left Behind
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.29 (14 reviews)
Author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
ISBN: 9781494573362

Author: Ellen Marie Wiseman

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 11 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/27/2014

Categories: Fiction, Family Life

Synopsis

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 cataloguing 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.

Clara Cartwright, eighteen years old in 1929, is caught between her overbearing parents and her love for an Italian immigrant. Furious when she rejects an arranged marriage, Clara's father sends her to a genteel home for nervous invalids. But when his fortune is lost in the stock market crash, 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.

About Ellen Marie Wiseman

Ellen Marie Wiseman is the author of the novels The Plum Tree and What She Left Behind. Born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in northern New York, Ellen now lives on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband, two spoiled shih-tzus, and a rescued yellow Lab. She loves to cook, travel, garden, watch movies, and spend time with her children and grandchildren.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Debbie on February 07, 2014

What began as an interesting idea morphed into a story so fraught with horrible events that the reader is left with disbelief instead of empathy. Wiseman interweaves two stories from two different time periods. Nineteen-year-old Clara comes from an upper crust family in 1929. Her love for an Italian......more

Goodreads review by Susanne on June 13, 2017

4 Stars. Imagine being an Eighteen Year-Old Woman named Clara Cartwright with a bright future ahead of you. The world is YOURS. The Year is 1929. You travel abroad with your parents, go to posh clubs, laugh with friends and simply enjoy what life has to offer you. And then, you meet a man. He is tall......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on March 05, 2014

There were several places in this book where I just had to put it down for a while. The brutal treatment that Clara endured at the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane and her heart wrenching sadness was just too much to bear. But I was compelled to continue with it. This is one of those books that......more

Goodreads review by Canadian Jen on March 07, 2016

It's 1929 and 18 year old Clara Cartwright has just told her parents she is in love with a man they disapprove of. The result: she is committed to an insane asylum. Fast forward to 1995. Izzy Stone is passed to another foster family as her mom sits in jail for killing Izzy's father. The 2 stories co......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on December 10, 2023

“What She Left Behind” is an interesting historical fiction novel depicting the time in America’s “Insane Asylum” history. I was aware that in the early 1900’s, men could deem any family member or worker insane and have them sent off to an insane asylum. I was not aware, however, of an accepted and......more