The Story She Left Behind

Author: Patti Callahan Henry
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Atria Books, 2025
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington's magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.

By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother's lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother's vanishing, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London's most deadly natural disasters - the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson's family retreat nestled in the Lake District. Is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her m
other and the story she left behind.

Review: I wanted to love this novel, but I really didn't. The build up was slow and the resolution was weak. Everything was just a little too neat and tidy. It had The Secret Book of Flora Lea vibes, whereas I think I would have preferred something more along the lines of Surviving Savannah. Both of these are novels also written by Patti Callahan Henry.

I waffled on how to rate this novel. I loved Flora Lea, but was I ready for a book so similar to it by this author? I don't think so. I also struggle with books that venture into the imaginary and mystical and I just finished Peony in Love (by Lisa See) which was a lot that. 

Maybe The Story She Left Behind was the right book, just at the wrong time.

Patti Callahan Henry Novels
Surviving Savannah
The Secret Book of Flora Lea