The Story She Left Behind

by Patti Callahan Henry

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

An enchanting tale about the power of storytelling, complex family mythologies, language and love, Patti Callahan Henry's latest can't be missed.

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).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668011874
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Patti Callahan Henry is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of several novels, including Surviving Savannah and Becoming Mrs. Lewis. She is the recipient of the Christy Award, the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Year Award, and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year. She is the cohost and cocreator of the popular weekly online live web show and podcast Friends and Fiction. She lives in Alabama and South Carolina with her family. Find out more at PattiCallahanHenry.com.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham CHAPTER 1 BRONWYN NEWCASTLE FORDHAM
Bluffton, South Carolina

1927

It is two o’clock in the morning when she leaves everyone she loves. At the edge of the May River, she unties the ropes of the Chris-Craft from the cleats of the weathered dock and steps into the boat. In the velvet quiet, a new moon cowers behind its dark cloak; the stars flare as bright as the fire that is sending her away.

She will be long gone before the tide returns in six hours to fill the marsh and secret waterways. She knows the tides of this estuary without having to look at a nautical chart or check the battered barometer that has always hung on the screened porch of their shingled house. She has planned this escape to the minute, and she does not hesitate.

The boat rides on the outgoing tide, and the wind-puckered river pushes it gently toward the sea, catching the current more quickly than she’d anticipated. Flickering lights of Bluffton dot the coastline like fireflies. Any minute, she’ll start the engine and navigate the boat toward Tybee Island and then into Savannah.

She stares at the ink-dark sky, at Orion and the Big Dipper. She doesn’t want to witness the familiar and loved landscape disappear.

Her mind begins to form a list, a habit she’s turned to since she was a child.

First, she lists what she’s brought with her: a coat, a change of clothes, a hundred dollars in cash that she took from the envelope they kept for emergencies, a notebook and a pen, as well as a leather satchel that contains the words she’s spent her life finding and creating.

The boat bobs and sways and she stares out to the horizon, waiting to start the engine. Her thoughts tick past what she’s brought and move to all she is leaving behind: the quiet crash of the incoming tide onto the oyster shells outside their window; the gray-shingled house that has protected her for ten years now; the room where she writes and reads in a chintz chair with the stuffing blooming out of the seams; the dimming of the day when longing rises and she dives into the warm waters of the river; the midsummer’s ivory bloom of the gardenia bush that she planted with her daughter; the soft caress of a breeze when she sits on the porch; her husband reaching for her in their bed and winding his fingers through hers while the crickets seem to cry.

And: Clara.

She holds the gunwale to steady herself as she walks to the cockpit. She presses the button to drop the single engine into the water while a surge of primal need for her daughter flows through her, causing her to sway with dizziness. She draws on her strength and on the knowledge that if she returns to her house, the world will do to her in full what it’s done only until now in part.

She thinks of the beauty of this place that she will carry with her: a place where fireflies decorate the nights and pine needles gather in soft beds, where sunrise tosses diamonds onto the water, where minnows flicker silver on the river’s surface.

The losses mount and she thinks nothing of what others might say, thinks nothing of her own well-being—Bronwyn needs to move forward and away from all that will come to pass if she stays. There are things that cannot be undone.

The unseen world has always called to her. She knows what she must do—she will become unseen. This is the answer for the character that she created, and this is her answer. Their destinies were always tangled together, she knows that now.

She finds the boat’s starter and presses it; the motor purrs, the water churns behind, and she pushes the throttle forward. She places her hands on the wheel. These are her waters, and she does not have to see to know the way.

Editorial Reviews

01/27/2025

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. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Brilliant, riveting, so beautifully written, impossible to put down. I wanted to know, needed to know, about the strange manuscript left to a daughter, and the odyssey it sent her on.” –Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels

“Patti Callahan Henry’s engaging, compassionate new novel honors the magical way words and stories create meaning in our often messy lives. Rooted in vivid landscapes, endearing characters, and an intriguing mystery inspired by actual historical events, The Story She Left Behind offers something for every reader. Book clubs will delight in this celebration of family, hope, forgiveness, and the tender generosity of abiding love.” —Shelley Read, International bestselling author of Go As A River



“The Story She Left Behind is an intriguing novel that reminds us that the power of love and the power of words are one and the same. Patti Callahan Henry introduces us to a missing mother, her grieving daughter and their entwined, unforgettable journeys. Inspired by an unsolved literary mystery, and layered with magical storytelling it is both real and imaginative—in the way of all great fiction. Not to be missed!” —Ariel Lawhon, New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia and The Frozen River

"The spectacular Patti Callahan Henry is at the height of her literary powers with The Story She Left Behind. Bronwyn's story, steeped in secrets and an unsolved family mystery, is emotional and atmospheric. The author paints the dual settings, languid South Carolina in America and the haunting Lake District of England with color and veracity. This mother-daughter story is one for the ages." —Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Left Undone

"Once again, Patti Callahan Henry proves that she is a magician with words. In her newest novel, she conjures a story that is a lovely mix of so many elements sure to please her universe of readers, a magical mosaic of adventure, suspense, romance, mystery, and even a sprinkle of make-believe. 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 of The River We Remember

From the Publisher

2024-12-28
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 divorcée 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.

Kirkus Reviews

This mystery explores the emotions felt by the family of a young American novelist who vanished 25 years earlier. Daughter Clara, skillfully portrayed by Julia Whelan, receives a cryptic phone call informing her that she must personally claim her mother's writing satchel. She steels herself and travels to London with her daughter. Once there, the two meet young executor Charlie, voiced with grace and charm by Theo Solomon, who whisks them to his family's country home, away from the Great Smog. There, Clara's stunning discovery upends her world. Delivering alternating points of view, both narrators give well-matched, compelling performances, including a range of American and UK accents. A clarifying author's note narrated by Henry closes the production. S.D.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

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