A year and a half ago I read a book by Ellen Marie Wiseman called The Orphan Collector. That book was about the Spanish Flu pandemic in Pennsylvania. I enjoyed that book and now I enjoyed What She Left Behind. This story has two strong women in it. Clara lives in New York City. Her parents are cold, snobby and overbearing. Clara and her girlfriends sneak out, put on flapper dresses, and go dancing in Harlem. When she brings home an Italian suitor her parents arrange a marriage for her with one of the business associates of her father. Clara refuses the arranged marriage. Her angry father calls the police and has her taken to an asylum claiming she is mentally ill. Eventually he loses his fortune in the Depression and she is transferred to a state asylum where she is punished for disobeying with ice baths, seclusion, and insulin treatments. The other strong woman is 17 year old Izzy who is in foster care because her mother murdered her father. Izzy was 8 when that happened. For four years she lived with her Grandmother. When the Grandmother died Izzy went into foster care. Now she is living with a nice foster family who work at a local museum. The foster parents ask her to help them document the belongings of the patients who lived at a local asylum. Izzy finds the trunk that Clara brought with her including the flapper dresses, her journal, and the letters she sent to her Italian boyfriend. Izzy is determined to know the whole story of Clara. As historical fiction novels go, this one was good. Treatment of mental illness before medications were available were not always kind nor helpful. I enjoyed reading about these two strong women and I thought the ending was delightful.
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