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The Story She Left Behind

A Novel

ebook
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: Available soon
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: Available soon
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Brilliant, riveting, so beautifully written, impossible to put down." —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author

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, vanishes 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 disappearance 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 insatiable: her beloved 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 disappearance, 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.
"Graceful in its telling and so very wise in its insights, The Story She Left Behind is a book that will capture your heart, lift your spirits, and delight your soul" (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author).
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    The publisher provides the following statement about the accessibility of the EPUB file supplied to OverDrive. Experiences may vary across reading systems. After borrowing the book, you may download the EPUB files to read in another reading system.

    Summary

    A simple complexity publication with cover images and logos, converted to meet EPUB Accessibility specifications of WCAG-AA level. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for cover images and logos, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order, structural navigation, and semantic structure. Blank pages from print have been removed in this ebook, with related page number spans set on the first following in-spine page. Certain front and back matter pages have been adjusted in the reading order sequence from print, with related page references removed in the page-list order.

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    • Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and font size, spaces between paragraphs, sentences, words, and letters, as well as color of background and text).

    • All content can be read as read aloud speech or dynamic braille.

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    • The publication contains a conformance statement that it meets the EPUB Accessibility and WCAG 2 Level AA standard.

    • This publication claims to meet EPUB Accessibility 1.1 WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

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    • Table of contents to all chapters of the text via links.

    • Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation.

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    • High contrast between text and background

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  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      February 1, 2025
      A woman travels from South Carolina to London to try to translate a book written by her long-lost mother. In 1952, Clara Harrington, a divorc�e with a young daughter, is an elementary school art teacher and children's book illustrator who's recently won the Caldecott Medal; despite her good life, she's haunted by the 1927 disappearance of her mother, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham. Bronwyn, who had written a bestselling book in her own unique language as a child, vanished on the night the family house caught fire, killing a fireman and injuring the 8-year-old Clara. Now Clara receives a call from a man named Charlie Jameson, who, while cleaning out his late father's library in London, found a set of papers marked "For Clara Harrington only," with her address and phone number attached, and a note saying they must be delivered in person. They include a dictionary that Clara immediately realizes could be used to translate her mother's sequel, written in the odd language she had made up. Charlie invites Clara to his family home in London, but upon arriving with her asthmatic daughter, Wynnie, the Great Smog of 1952 forces the trio to the Lake District. There, Clara uncovers connections she didn't expect: Eliza Walker, the author for whom she has illustrated numerous books without ever meeting, lives in the area and turns out to have adapted her mother's first book into a play. Clara becomes convinced that the Lake District holds more answers to the mystery of her mother's disappearance. Though the setup is intriguing, the novel is overly long and meandering and fails to provide satisfying answers to the mysteries at its heart. This novel will leave readers wishing for more.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      February 1, 2025
      Clara's mother, Bronwyn, was best known as a child prodigy who created her own language and wrote a best-selling children's book. However, she was never able to produce the anticipated sequel. By 1927, when Clara is eight years old, Bronwyn is overwhelmed by the world around her and disappears from their South Carolina home. Twenty-five years later, in London, Charlie is going through his recently deceased father's library when he comes across a satchel containing an envelope for Clara, to be delivered in person. Still heavily carrying the weight of losing her mother, Clara agrees to go to London with her own young daughter. She is thrilled to finally have her mother's lost papers, but the more time she spends with Charlie, the more connections she uncovers between his family and hers. Inspired by a true story, and enhanced by vivid descriptions of character and setting, this is a somewhat whimsical tale of a woman drawn to her imaginary world who fiercely loved her family, as well as an exploration of the hard choices that tear families apart and the love that sustains them.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 27, 2025
      In this captivating outing from Henry (The Secret Book of Flora Lea), a children’s book illustrator searches for her mother, a renowned children’s book author who disappeared decades earlier. Thirty-year-old Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham disappeared from her home on the South Carolina coast in 1927, leaving behind an unpublished sequel to the novel she wrote as a precocious 12-year-old, which made her famous. In 1952, Bronwyn’s daughter, Clara, gets a mysterious call from Charles Jameson, a Londoner who’s just discovered a satchel in his recently deceased father’s library filled with papers belonging to Bronwyn. Among the materials is a letter stipulating the satchel must be hand-delivered to Clara. She and her asthmatic eight-year-old daughter, Wynnie, arrive in London during the Great Smog, and they accept Charlie’s invitation to stay at his mother’s Lake District home, where the air is clearer. Clara feels very much at home on the pastoral landscape and finds a romantic spark with Charles. Henry imbues her story with lush descriptions of the landscape and intriguing linguistic puzzles as Clara attempts to decipher Bronwyn’s dictionary of the invented language that was central to her work. Readers will be riveted.

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