What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wisman

Author : Ellen Marie Wisman
Title : What She Left Behind
Published : 2013
Publisher : Kensington
Pages : 336
Genre : Historical Fiction

     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.

     As of recently, I have been trying to explore more historical fiction. There is a wealth of stories out there that cover so many topics. It's is easy to write these of a flight of fancy into the past. But I think there is a great deal that is still relevant today. As mental health issues come more to the foreground it is sometimes wise to look at how far things have come. It would seem that in nineteen twenty-nine people could be locked up in an asylum for just about anything. Non more so than women. As would become evident in Clara's story a woman who had done nothing wrong except to defy her father. 

     Throughout the book, we move between Izzy in the present and Clara in the past. Both of these women are fighting battles, not of the choosing. And while they may be separated by sixty-six years they would seem to have a great deal in common. The is a fire that is burning deep down inside of them. A need to survive the horrors the world has chosen to throw at them. When it comes to Clara it is hard to put my self in her situation. For most of us who we chose as a partner in life is a matter of our own decision. We are free to look around and think to our selves well he or she seems nice let's make a go of it. None of this is to say that Clara's story did not pull at my heart a great deal. As I read her chapters I could not help but want to take her away from her situation, to live free and be happy. But this is not something we as the reader can do. We must endure along with her as her life is stripped away to its very core. For Izzy, she can enjoy certain freedoms that were only a dream for Clara. But this is not to say her life is easy. Being bounced around from one foster care to another has left her with a wall around her. She does not want to let anyone in for fear of being hurt all over again. 

     From the get-go this is not an easy story to read, we are left at the end of each chapter feeling bruised by the experience. Clara and Izzy's stories are not supposed to be a jolly romp through the past. The author shines a light on how the past is never what we think it will be. The treatment of women in asylums never seems to have been an easy one. I was left with a feeling of deep sorrow for what Clara went through and only imagining what it was like for the people who truly experienced it in real life.  In some ways, this is the part Izzy plays for us. She is the outsider looking in at this world, trying to prove people care about such topics. Whilst a broken woman herself self she has so much empathy for a woman she has never met. There is a longing both in Izzy and the reader to find out what became of Clara. Possibly a desperate search for a better outcome than the one our minds would lead us to believe.  But I suppose this can also be leveled at the life of Izzy. She too is hoping for a better outcome to a life that seems to have been laid out for her.

     I think this is one of those books that will not be to everyone's liking. We are forced to bear witness to events that no one should have to endure. It is a harrowing looking at what may become of people when their choices are taken out of there hands and given to others. The author has done an astounding job in making all of this seem so real and in doing so gives a shock to your system. It is a book that not only brings on a great deal of emotions but also makes you think a great deal, and through this leaves a lasting impression on the reader.