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What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman: An Audiobook Review
If you are highly sensitive, empathetic to an extreme or have a gentle constitution, you mustn’t read this book — you won’t survive the heartache
The lives of two girls from different generations intersect in the present and through the past, unfolding in heart-wrenching drama. This book is not only a must-read, but a “must have on the bookshelf” masterpiece.
What She Left Behind ruined me daily. I commuted to and from work with my heart in my throat and my anxiety racing the engine’s RPMs.
It’s challenging to rate a book that hits you with tidal waves of misery. The only book I can compare Wiseman’s masterpiece to is Cormac McCarthy’s — The Road, which carries despair to the final sentence, leaving you hollowed out, yet somehow better for the experience.
Wiseman has done the same in this tragic tale; the emotion at her novel’s conclusion takes what’s left of your emotional rope and pulls hard.
The story takes place in two eras: 1920s New York and modern America. Both periods feature a young girl at the center, Clara Cartwright in the past and Izzy Stone in the present. The lives of both girls are marked with tragedy due to circumstances…
