Mollie Reads
February 17, 2025
I love, love Patti Callahan Henry! Her book The Secret Book of Flora Lea was one of my best fiction books of 2024. And this one seems to be another literary historical mystery about the love of story, and I just can’t wait to read it!
It’s a book about motherhood, family legacy and uncovered secrets. We follow eight-year-old Clara in 1927 when her mother disappears in South Carolina.
Her mother was a well-known author, and by 1952, Clara follows in her mother’s literary footsteps and works as an illustrator while raising her daughter, Wynnie.
I’m so excited to see how this story unfolds! I know it’s about acceptance, forgiveness, and being brave enough to find the truth.
Here’s the publisher’s synopsis:
Inspired by a true literary mystery, New York Times bestselling author of the mesmerizing The Secret Book of Flora Lea returns with the sweeping story of a legendary book, a lost mother, and a daughter’s search for them both.
In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina.
Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old.
Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband 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 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.
It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.
Told in Patti Callahan Henry’s lyrical, enchanting prose, The Story She Left Behind is a captivating novel of mystery and family legacy that captures the profound longing for a mother and the evergreen allure of secrets.
The Story She Left Behind will be published on March 18, 2025, from Atria Books.