Two Girls with One Hope
One true love, two X chromosomes, and an undying courage to speak her mind.
That is all Clara needed in order to get herself locked up in an insane asylum.
Clara Cartwright is a nineteen-year old girl who lives in Upper West Side NYC with her mother and father, who is the CEO of Swiss Bank. A witness to the Roaring Twenties, Clara enjoys a posh life, the details of which Wiseman describes in a manner that is reminiscent of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Clara is very much a teenager; she loves to go driving and clubbing with her friends without her parents knowing, and it is at one of her many parties that she meets Bruno, who is an Italian immigrant. He becomes the love of her life, they are practically ready to get married, and everything is sublime except for one thing: Clara’s father does not approve of Bruno. Overly class-conscious, shallow and materialistic, Clara's parents simply do not think Bruno fits their bill. So they find some other man, a "womanizer," according to Clara, who they feel is more appropriate and they arrange a marriage for Clara without her consent. A modern, forward-thinking woman, Clara is fully aware of the miserable life her mother has lived, trapped in the nest of her husband; she does not want to get locked up in an equally loveless marriage, all in the name of money. And she makes this very clear to her parents. Her father, being the powerful macho man that he is, does not stand for Clara’s defiance and has her sent to a home for nervous invalids against her will. When the stock market crashes, he can no longer afford to pay for Clara’s stay at this home, and in an effort to conserve the high-class life that he and his wife have always enjoyed, he has Clara transferred to the state-funded insane asylum, where Clara spends all her time hoping that, one day, she will be free again. [Sigh.] Putting your luxury life before the well-being of your child. Wouldn't you say Clara’s father deserves a medal for #1 dad of the year?
When Isabelle Stone was first informed that her mother had been sentenced to prison, she made a promise to herself that she would never pay her mother a visit, even if it killed her. A seventeen-year old girl in 1995 Central New York, Izzy has been in the foster care system for ten years, ever since her mother shot her father dead in his sleep. Isabelle concludes that the only possible explanation for her mother murdering her father is that she is crazy, but the doctors always believed that she was perfectly sane, that it made more sense for prison to become her new permanent residence, rather than the nuthouse. Izzy refuses to go anywhere near her psycho mother, for fear that she will become psycho herself. When the book begins, Izzy has been transferred to a new foster home, and her story in part gives today’s teenagers something to relate to. Izzy is the new girl in school, and she is busy juggling everything a high school senior has to deal with; she is worrying about college and her future, and life in general. Her new parents work at a museum and they ask her to help out with a new exhibit they are preparing on mental institutions and patients that lost their lives to insanity. The exhibit is supposed to focus on Willard State Asylum, which happens to be the same asylum that Clara Cartwright inhabited many years ago. (Fun fact: Did you know that Willard State Asylum actually exists? Well, perhaps that fact it not so fun.) While rummaging through old patient belongings, Izzy finds Clara’s journal and she immerses herself in finding out more about Clara, and piecing together the life she would have lived if she never became “insane.” As Izzy reads more about Clara, she realizes the possibility that Clara was never really crazy. Through Clara’s story, she starts to think more about her own life’s circumstances; maybe there really is more to her mother’s story than simply losing her mind?
With What She Left Behind, German-American Ellen Marie Wiseman, author of bestselling novel The Plum Tree, creates a unique blend between the stories of two young women set in different eras. What the author does is to weave their stories together by alternating chapters throughout the book. Not only is the novel a tale of two time periods, but it is also a hybrid of the genres psychological thriller, mystery and historical fiction. In its simplest form, What She Left Behind is a story about the past and the present, and what happens when the two cross paths.
Historical fiction and suspense lovers will find an intriguing journey awaiting them within the pages of Wiseman's detailed prose. Fans of Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train, Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, and Catherine Ran Hyde's When I Found You will find What She Left Behind to be much more than their typical satisfying read.
That is all Clara needed in order to get herself locked up in an insane asylum.
Clara Cartwright is a nineteen-year old girl who lives in Upper West Side NYC with her mother and father, who is the CEO of Swiss Bank. A witness to the Roaring Twenties, Clara enjoys a posh life, the details of which Wiseman describes in a manner that is reminiscent of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Clara is very much a teenager; she loves to go driving and clubbing with her friends without her parents knowing, and it is at one of her many parties that she meets Bruno, who is an Italian immigrant. He becomes the love of her life, they are practically ready to get married, and everything is sublime except for one thing: Clara’s father does not approve of Bruno. Overly class-conscious, shallow and materialistic, Clara's parents simply do not think Bruno fits their bill. So they find some other man, a "womanizer," according to Clara, who they feel is more appropriate and they arrange a marriage for Clara without her consent. A modern, forward-thinking woman, Clara is fully aware of the miserable life her mother has lived, trapped in the nest of her husband; she does not want to get locked up in an equally loveless marriage, all in the name of money. And she makes this very clear to her parents. Her father, being the powerful macho man that he is, does not stand for Clara’s defiance and has her sent to a home for nervous invalids against her will. When the stock market crashes, he can no longer afford to pay for Clara’s stay at this home, and in an effort to conserve the high-class life that he and his wife have always enjoyed, he has Clara transferred to the state-funded insane asylum, where Clara spends all her time hoping that, one day, she will be free again. [Sigh.] Putting your luxury life before the well-being of your child. Wouldn't you say Clara’s father deserves a medal for #1 dad of the year?
When Isabelle Stone was first informed that her mother had been sentenced to prison, she made a promise to herself that she would never pay her mother a visit, even if it killed her. A seventeen-year old girl in 1995 Central New York, Izzy has been in the foster care system for ten years, ever since her mother shot her father dead in his sleep. Isabelle concludes that the only possible explanation for her mother murdering her father is that she is crazy, but the doctors always believed that she was perfectly sane, that it made more sense for prison to become her new permanent residence, rather than the nuthouse. Izzy refuses to go anywhere near her psycho mother, for fear that she will become psycho herself. When the book begins, Izzy has been transferred to a new foster home, and her story in part gives today’s teenagers something to relate to. Izzy is the new girl in school, and she is busy juggling everything a high school senior has to deal with; she is worrying about college and her future, and life in general. Her new parents work at a museum and they ask her to help out with a new exhibit they are preparing on mental institutions and patients that lost their lives to insanity. The exhibit is supposed to focus on Willard State Asylum, which happens to be the same asylum that Clara Cartwright inhabited many years ago. (Fun fact: Did you know that Willard State Asylum actually exists? Well, perhaps that fact it not so fun.) While rummaging through old patient belongings, Izzy finds Clara’s journal and she immerses herself in finding out more about Clara, and piecing together the life she would have lived if she never became “insane.” As Izzy reads more about Clara, she realizes the possibility that Clara was never really crazy. Through Clara’s story, she starts to think more about her own life’s circumstances; maybe there really is more to her mother’s story than simply losing her mind?
With What She Left Behind, German-American Ellen Marie Wiseman, author of bestselling novel The Plum Tree, creates a unique blend between the stories of two young women set in different eras. What the author does is to weave their stories together by alternating chapters throughout the book. Not only is the novel a tale of two time periods, but it is also a hybrid of the genres psychological thriller, mystery and historical fiction. In its simplest form, What She Left Behind is a story about the past and the present, and what happens when the two cross paths.
Historical fiction and suspense lovers will find an intriguing journey awaiting them within the pages of Wiseman's detailed prose. Fans of Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train, Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, and Catherine Ran Hyde's When I Found You will find What She Left Behind to be much more than their typical satisfying read.