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    What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction
    What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction
    What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction
    Ebook463 pages7 hours

    What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction

    By Ellen Marie Wiseman

    4/5

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    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
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKensington Books
    Release dateDec 31, 2013
    ISBN9780758278463
    Author

    Ellen Marie Wiseman

    Ellen Marie Wiseman is the New York Times bestselling author of the highly acclaimed historical fiction novels The Orphan Collector, What She Left Behind, The Plum Tree, Coal River and The Life She Was Given. 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 published worldwide, translated into twenty languages, and named to “Best Of” lists by Reading Group Choices, Good Housekeeping, Goodreads, The Historical Novel Society, Great Group Reads, and more. A mother of two, Ellen lives on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband and dog. Visit her online at EllenMarieWiseman.com.

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    Reviews for What She Left Behind

    4/5

    273 ratings26 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I liked this book about Izzy who in current time is helping her foster parents go through the papers and records of a closed asylum. They find old trunks of patients belongings. Inside one of these trunks, Izzy finds letters and journals of eighteen year-old Clara. She takes these home to read and book is thus divided between their two stories. The ending is heart warming though I found it not believable.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! Yes, it was hard to read in parts, but it's a true representation of what went on in these asylums at that time. Women were committed for all sorts of minor flaws, none of them indicating mental illness. As for the present-day story line, it was almost like it was there for a break from Clara's struggle! A chance to breathe before you get back to it. I had a hard time putting this book down and looked forward to getting back to it. While I am sure that all manner of sexual attacks took place on those poor women, I appreciated the author not including those in her narrative. The men in charge were bad enough as it was. Wonderful book.
    • 2/5
      The young narrator has spent years in foster care after her mother shot her father in he head as he slept. Her mother was first placed in a mental hospital, then in a prison.She finally finds herself with a couple who really cares;unfortunately, they are involved in curating the contents of an old mental hospital. The narrator finds the journal of a young patient named Clara and becomes a bit obssessed with determing what happened to her.There's also a hunky boy to contend with, along with the female bully of the high school she attends. It wasn't a bad story, but it was all a bit too overwrought for my tastes.
    • 4/5
      Wow. So far everyone in my book club has used the same word to describe Ellen's second novel, "gripping." It is sad to think that even as advances in our treatment of medical conditions were progressing rapidly, our treatment of mental illness was still near barbaric. I have some questions about how some of the details were tied off, or left hanging, but overall this was a great read. I am a big fan of dual timeline stories...and happy endings! Looking forward to the release of her third novel, and still finding it hard to believe that she lives right here in the same county!
    • 4/5
      Having read numerous favorable reviews about Ellen Marie Wiseman’s ‘What She Left Behind,’ I was so anxious to read it, and enjoyed this wonderful gift from my dear book club friend. The story will pull at your heartstrings though, as the author moves through the tragic lives of Clara and Bruno, two separated lovers who spend their lifetimes trying to reconnect with each other. Because Clara rejects her overbearing father’s arranged marriage proposal, in favor of a relationship with an Italian immigrant, he commits her to a private insane asylum. However, when Clara’s dad loses his entire fortune, Clara is transferred to the public asylum where she endures horrific, tortuous conditions, while continuing to hope to be reunited with Bruno one day. The tortuous conditions that Clara experienced at the public institution were a bit exaggerated in the story, as the author did issue a disclaimer that some of the treatments, such as ice-baths, shock treatment, and diabetic insulin injection treatment, were not all used within the same historical periods, although Clara was submitted to each one. In this aspect of the story, it was difficult for me to imagine that Clara’s parents could choose to be so heartless and cruel to their only child. I thought that only the harshest and most uncaring parent would submit their daughter to a mental institution without checking to make sure that at least her physical wellbeing was being met. Clara’s parents did not seem that heartless.The novel also moves in the present day, as Izzy, a seventeen-year-old girl, is resolving an unfinished relationship with her dying mom. Ten years ago Izzy’s mom shot and killed her dad, and all these years Izzy has refused to visit her mom in prison or to open the letters that her mother sent. Now Izzy comes to live with her foster parents, Peg and Harry, who are curators of the local museum, and are going through artifacts left behind from the public mental asylum. As Izzy stumbles upon Clara’s journal and some letters, she strives to bring some resolution to Clara’s life, as well as to her own. Although both stories were extremely tragic in this novel, I appreciated the resiliency and strength of both Clara and Izzy, as they endured extraordinary hardships with a persistency and spirit that I so admired.
    • 4/5
      This novel is told in dual perspective, with Clara, a patient at Willard State in the 1930s, and Izzy, a modern day foster child whose mother brutally murdered her father. In 1929 we meet Clara Cartwright, an eighteen-year-old from a wealthy family who falls in love with an Italian immigrant. Like many women of the time, Clara had specific roles to fulfill. When she refuses to marry a friend of her father, she is sent to a mental institution and she is later transferred to Willard, a state insane asylum.

      In the present day we have teenage Izzy who has been placed with a new foster family. Izzy’s mother killed her father ten years before and Izzy hasn’t seen her since then. When Izzy’s foster parents, museum workers, involve her in a project to help clean out and categorize the belongings from the now-closed Willard State Hospital, Izzy finds Clara’s suitcase. These two characters were interwoven in the plot through Clara’s journal in a fairly seamless way and the plots merge together. In Clara’s story, we see her separated from her lover, and thrust into an undeserved life in the asylum without seeing him. She fights to remain hopeful and to prove her state of mind. I admired her as she grows from a young, careless girl to a wise woman, who endures the pain and indignity of her circumstances.

      The reader is exposed to the inhumane treatment of the falsely and genuinely insane. There were scenes in What She Left Behind that left me in horror and pity, knowing that while this book was fiction, there are numerous recorded incidents of this type of treatment. I didn't enjoy the Izzy story line nearly as much as I did Clara's. Clara was a much more vivid character and I think Izzy suffered in comparison. It was a very interesting and thought provoking book .
    • 5/5
      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. 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.
    • 4/5
      I thought this book had a great concept, loved the characters and how they were explored in parallel but overlapping lives. I was cheering for the main characters - one a woman who was locked away in an insane asylum and one a young woman searching for some kind of family life. The story was good and I enjoyed reading how they finally connected but it seemed like as the end of the book drew near - everything was tied up quickly with a bow on it. So for me - a good story that could have had a better ending.
    • 5/5
      FlawlessAbandoned to an insane asylum for going against her fathers wishes. Wow! Masterfully written. I think, by far, that this is the most compelling novel I've read in a long time. I'm, at this moment, still visibly shaken by its content. I HIGHLY recommend this novel. A+!!! 110%!!!
    • 4/5
      Great Book! Izzy Stone, a foster child whose mother is incarcerated in a mental instituion for the killing of Izzy's father when she was 6 years old. While working with her foster mother on a museum project to organize items in a shuttered closed Willard Asylum, she comes across an old trunk full with personal items, letters and a diary belonging to patient Clara Cartwright. Izzy is obsessed with learning what happened to Clara. As she reads Clara's diary, she learns that she was sent to an asylum by her parents for falling in love with an italian immigrant who her parents didn't approve of. The story moves between present day Izzy and her struggles to fit in with another foster family and new school and Clara's struggle to prove to the doctors that she isn't insane. Very touching. Brought tears of sorrow and joy.
    • 5/5
      What an incredible story! What She Left Behind is a stunning and heart-wrenching story told in vivid detail. You will become entangled in sadness from beginning to end. The author does a beautiful job blending together two storylines – Clara’s past, beginning in 1929, and Izzy’s quest in the present day. These two characters are wonderfully portrayed.Izzy – For the first time since she was a child, 17-year-old Izzy had foster parents who cared. Her mother was doing time in prison for shooting her father and she was still living that nightmare. Izzy’s new foster mom, Peg, asked her to help at Willard, an old insane asylum, going through old suitcases to help safeguard anything that might be worth keeping before the buildings were condemned. They were uncovering buried secrets, handling personal belongings of long-dead, mentally ill people. Izzy becomes connected to Clara, a former patient at Willard, and her horrible story.Clara was going to be trapped in an arranged marriage to a man she didn’t love. She wanted to share her life with Bruno and for the first time in her life she felt loved and cherished. Clara’s heartless father plots against her, lying about her sanity. She eventually ends up in Willard Asylum because she was in love with a man her father didn’t approve of. If you weren’t insane when you entered Willard you certainly became insane with the torture they endured.And the story unfolds as Clara, with her fractured heart and wounded spirit, fights to be released from Willard. And the duel storyline between Clara and Izzy becomes tied together to reveal an informative read, but a very disturbing topic.Superlative novel! This book I've added to my all time favorites. My rating is 5+ stars.
    • 3/5
      Reading these books on the treatment of the mentally ill in the past and the flimsy reason men could use to lock women away, make me terribly angry and sad. Also makes me so very grateful, for the women who fought for women's rights and also that I live now, in this time period. Parts of this book was difficult to read because of the subject.Two storylines, one in the past and one in the present. Both young woman, going through difficult times, trying to find their ways through life and out of their difficulties. The treatment of the mentally ill was horrifying, how people could treat other people like that. People that should have been helpful and compassionate, doctors, nurses, husbands and parents.If I rated this book on how it tugged on my heart strings, my rating would have been higher. The book did make me want to continue reading, I wanted to know what happens to them, how things were resolved. At times though I felt like the plot changes between the two stories were handled awkwardly, the same with some of the dialogue. All in all this was an interesting look at the past treatment of those thought to be mentally ill, and a heartfelt story of two young women who have more in common than they know.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book despite some of the incredulous bits. It was a time to exersize suspention of disbelief to the fullest.

      I loved both Clara and Izzy. They were such amazing, nice people. It was hard to read about challenging, unreasonable and downright mean things happening to them.

      I was left with a massive question. What happend to all of Clara's family money? Surly her parents couldn't take it with them and it was mentioned that they made the paper when they were killed in a car accident. This money must have gone straight to Clara as there were no other children. I think that could have been explained much better.

      If you love history-mystery books this is a great read.
    • 2/5
      It is a quick read. I liked Izzy's story and I felt there was more to explore with her. Very average book.
    • 5/5
      An exceptionally written dual timeline novel!Heartbreaking and suspenseful, this intriguing story spans decades. The vivid details and strong characters pulled me in from page one. And the multi-layered plot veined and twisted keeping me completely engrossed to the end.The strength and love that drives these women to overcome adversity will have you cheering them on. The events that happen will outrage you. It is not a story for the squeamish.
    • 5/5
      I’m an avid reader and this is by far one of my favorites. It’ll hit you right in your soul. Grab the tissues and set aside a few hours cause you won’t want to put this one down.
    • 5/5
      An exceptionally written dual timeline novel!
      Heartbreaking and suspenseful, this intriguing story spans decades. The vivid details and strong characters pulled me in from page one. And the multi-layered plot veined and twisted keeping me completely engrossed to the end.
      The strength and love that drives these women to overcome adversity will have you cheering them on. The events that happen will outrage you. It is not a story for the squeamish.
    • 3/5
      Izzy Stone is seventeen. Her mother fatally shot her father while he slept ten years ago and she has refused to visit her in prison. She was living with her grandmother until she passed away and has been with several foster families. But her new foster parents seem great. They're curators at the local museum and have asked for Izzy's help cataloging the items found inside an old state asylum. The asylum makes her uncomfortable as it makes her think of her mother's "insanity." As she goes through one of the former patient's belongings she's taken to another time in search of answers.

      Clara Cartwright was eighteen years old in 1929 when she was sent away to a genteel home for nervous invalids; her overbearing father furious at her for rejecting an arranged marriage and falling in love with an Italian immigrant. But when he can no longer afford her care at the home after losing money in the stock market crash, Clara is committed to the asylum.

      This is a weird book for me to describe - it wasn't bad, but I'm happy it's over. I guess I didn't enjoy my time locked away in an insane asylum with Clara when we didn't have to be there. I can't imagine going through what either one of the main characters went through, really. The writing was okay, a little repetitious at times. Izzy swallows lots of burning lumps in her throat, she might want to get that checked out.

      I won a copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed the multiple points of view used by this author! The stories of Izzy and Clara were heartbreaking and I could definitely feel so many things for the characters. The ending was a little quick for me, but I enjoyed the storyline immensely.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      An entertaining enough book to read when you've broken your kneecap and can't do much else. I knew a bit about Willard from other books I've read, but this had more details on some of the "treatments" etc. I have the first book by this author in my TBR pile. Liked this one enough to probably read that, but I'm not going to rush and pull it out for an immediate read. The writing fell a little flat for me in this, and there were times I sort of skim-read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Well, really I did not like this book much though the ending was good but maybe too good with all pieces tying up nicely. Others have remarked that the story is a little improbable and I would agree. I know that women were put into state hospitals because they had no rights and that there was many abuses but I always respond to these so totally negative descriptions because I worked in a state hospital for 23 years. The author covers the different treatments that the mentally ill received years ago. She covers a wide range over many years and admits that she did not make this historically accurate. She mentions cages, morgues, cemeteries where the mentally ill were buried without grave markers, cold water bathes, insulin shock treatments and electric shock treatment. She describes the conditions as grimy sheets but always there is the workers in the laundry and folding of laundry. The history of the state hospital where I worked includes a setting that at once had a farm and lots of jobs for the patient's to do. There was an area whee the walls were marked by the years of people being confined to an area where they sat for long hours leaning on the wall. We had a morgue, we had a cemetery which did come under scrutiny and the graves were either marked or moved. I don't remember quite but the issue was addressed. People did receive shock treatment; both electrical and insulin in the past. The first unit I worked on was with the elderly and a lot of those had had lobotomies (not mentioned in this book). I listened to the audio version of the book, read by Tavia Gilbert, she did a fairly good job trying to make voices unique for each character. At the end, the author explains that she wished to address the issue of women being mistreated by placement in mental facilities. I think that part was good. She admits to no historical accuracy but the place, Willard, did exist. At the end she talks about the treatments and gives the years they were first use and mentions that psychologists didn't work in state hospitals until, when through the whole book she called the Dr. Roach and other doctors psychiatrists (at least that is how I understood it) and then in the end refers to psychologists so the author like a lot of people don't seem to understand the different positions that work in mental health. I have seen many changes in mental health in my 31 years in psychiatry. Patient rights have been greatly improved and father's and families cannot lock up people for convenience anymore but some of the changes have not been all that great either. And another comment; this book does remind you of Orphan Train format with the dual stories and trying to match up a young girl from the eighties with Clara from the twenties/thirties.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Wow, just, wow, this book is great! I wasn’t expecting so many holding my breath moments. It always fascinates and horrifies me to learn of the treatment in some of these so called hospitals and the reasons so many women were put into these places. Poor Clara all she did was fall in love with a man her father didn’t approve of so she was locked up and lied about and left there with no-one to turn to, in 1929 this was okay for a father to do to his child. Clara starts out in a little better place at least she had one nice nurse but when the crash hits and her father can no longer pay the bill Clara ends up in Willard hospital a state run home that is an awful, awful place! In the present day we have Izzie, she is a foster child whose mother is in prison for killing her father her foster parents are doing a project on Willard for the local museum and when Izzie finds Clara’s diary she becomes fascinated with learning more about this woman. Both of these stories are interesting Clara’s more so but there are parts of Izzie’s story that will break your heart too. This book grabbed me right from the beginning and didn’t let go till the end it was never boring and there were times I was yelling at my ipod because of things that happened to Clara and Bruno. I was surprised at how invested I got in these characters and that there were some really intense scenes I wasn’t expecting. Tavia Gilbert’s narration was as always fantastic; everyone had a different voice and inflection so you were never confused as to who was talking. All voices from the main characters Izzy & Clara to the side characters were all done to perfection.Loved the ending …Oh Clara!If you are a fan of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox I’d say to give this one a try, you won’t be disappointed.5 stars

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Mental illness. What is it? That depends on when, where and who you are. For Clara, she refused to kowtow to your father's directives and marry someone who was in a better place in society rather than a poor immigrant whom Clara loved. After everything that happened to Clara, it is a miracle that she didn't succumb to being held in a state-run mental institution for over 60 years. For Izzy, it takes the form of a mother trying to protect you from your father and being confined to a prison-run hospital.Happy endings for both of them, but, oh, my, what a struggle. Just proves that the treatment of the mentally ill has been (and always may be) determined by current societal/political mores.
    • 4/5
      Izzy Stone, seventeen years old and in a new foster home again at the start of a new school year, is still struggling with her mother's murder of her father ten years ago. Obviously her mother must be insane; it's the only explanation. But does that mean Izzy might go mad, too? Can she ever dare to marry and have children, or would she be passing along the madness, and putting whoever she loved at risk?

      But right now, her new foster parents work at a local museum, and have asked her to help out with sorting and cataloging materials in the now-closed public insane asylum, the Willard. And in a steamer trunk in the attic, they find the journal of Clara Cartwright, committed there by her father in 1929, at the age of eighteen. Clara's "madness" was that she refused an arranged marriage, wanting to marry Italian immigrant Bruno, whom she loved and whom Henry Cartwright regarded as beneath him.

      Over the next several weeks, Izzy gets caught up in Clara's story and learning what happened to her, while she struggles with being the new girl again, this time in her senior year, with fears that her mother's madness will affect her, and the horribly practical fear of what will happen when she turns eighteen, and the state will no longer pay her current foster parents, Peg and Harry, to give her a home and take care of her. They're the best foster parents she's had since her grandmother died when she was ten, and "aging out" means homelessness for many orphaned teens, so it's a real fear.

      We get Izzy's story and Clara's in alternating chapters. They're both compelling and moving. I'm just about willing to swear I knew some of Izzy's classmates when I was in high school. The Kafkaesque horrors of early 20th century mental institutions is portrayed in its grimness but without undue melodrama, and there's an afterword noting which "therapies" were really in use in the early thirties, and which were earlier or later.

      It all wraps up to a satisfying but not over-the-top conclusion.

      Recommended.

      I bought this book.
    • 3/5
      This was a very interesting plot structure.Izzy is a young woman in today's time that finds a journal written by a young Clara back in the 1930's. The book then does each chapter between the two women. lClara has been incarcerated into an insane asylum by her parents after defying their wish for her to marry someone that she was not in love with.Izzy is experiencing starting a new school in her senior year and trying to fit in with people that have known each other most of their lives.Both women have hard lives and it can be a little oppressive at times during the reading. The concept was good and fascinating.
    • 5/5
      Very good book, I thoroughly enjoyed the mix of historical fact and the various characterizations (even though the 'bullying" was a bit formulaic). i would recommend it highly; and I would be curious to check out her other book.

    Book preview

    What She Left Behind - Ellen Marie Wiseman

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