The Story She left Behind

By Patti Callahan Henry (Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2025)

Genre: Fiction/Historical Fiction

Pages (print): 339

Via: Library

Talith: When the sky breaks open; transformation that changes you into who you are meant to be; into your very essence.

Kimber: I won’t grow up,
(I won’t grow up)
I don’t want to go to school.
(I don’t want to go to school)
Just to learn to be a parrot,
(Just to learn to be a parrot)
And recite a silly rule.
(And recite a silly rule)…

Mom: Kimmi, what in the world are you doing?

Kimber: I’m putting that book we just finished to music. You know. That one you said was – and I quote: “One of the most remarkable historical fiction/fantasy novels I’ve read in years.”

Mom: Oh. You mean Patti Callahan Henry’s The Story She Left Behind?

Kimber: Bingo! Now step away from the pixie dust and tell the peeps about this Totally PAWsome book already.

Mom: Roger that. Here goes:

The 4-1-1

Clara Herrington is the only daughter of an only daughter. Her mother, Browyn Fordham Newcastle, was a child prodigy with an exceptional gift for imagination and creativity. Indeed, “Bronny” started making up her own language at age five and published her first and last novel at age twelve. Bronny also disappeared. Vanished without a trace. In 1927.

“Language carries our sense of self, and it’s possible she felt that the language she knew wasn’t enough. But every language, every story, every song, is built on the ones before it. Some words migrate across countries and centuries. I see the roots of other languages in your mother’s words, and she has also made them her own.”

It’s now 1952. Bronny’s adult daughter, Clara Herrington, has wed, birthed a child, divorced, and lives with her father in South Carolina. Clara is an elementary school art teacher who also illustrates children’s stories. About a hedgehog. Named Harriet. Clara’s good at it. So good, in fact, that she’s just been awarded the Caldecott Medal.

But Clara is restless. Her mother disappeared when she was eight years old. The same age as Clara’s daughter, Wynnie. Like her author grandma, Wynnie has “friends” that are “invisible, not imaginary.” All her life Clara has wondered why her mother deserted her. And has never found a single clue.

It’s rumored that Bronwyn wrote a sequel to her famous book, The Middle Place. It’s about a young girl, Emjie, who found another world. Emjie leaves the earthbound world for another “and became stuck, unable to find her way back to those she loved.” The book ends with Emjie caught between two worlds – the “real” world and a “faerie/fantasy” world – and no way to get back.

Whispers of a “dictionary” written by Bronny that will enable Clara to translate the sequel, if it exists, swirl in from England. It starts with a cryptic call from one Charlie Jameson of England’s Lake District. Charlie’s recently deceased father, Callum, stored some papers in his library that belong to Clara’s mother. How did Callum get them? Why? When? Where?

Meanwhile, Charlie wonders how his family “was tangled up with this little girl (Wynnie), now only his father knew the answer.” But dad’s dead. And he’s taken his secrets with him to the grave.

It was clear now: all hope for understanding her – for pulling back the veil that covered her life in language, and for finding reasons and meaning in what she’d done – had vanished, spread across a frosted field, snatched by a thief in the middle of the country.

Thickens

The plot thickens when Charlie tells Clara that these papers from his father’s study and the satchel they were found in includes a letter for Clara. From her mom. “I felt my Mother hiding in the crevices of this family,” says Clara. She books passage on a ship to England with Wynnie, hoping to unravel the mystery of her mother’s disappearance – a disappearance that’s haunted Clara for twenty-five years.

Clara explains, “I’d believed – and it might be true – that the pages of her sequel held her true self, that there was another mother and she was hidden in the story. I wanted to know that mother so badly.”

Uh- Oh

Clara and Wynnie arrive in London during one of the city’s most deadly natural disasters—the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in grave danger, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson’s family retreat nestled in the Lake District.

I thought of how we protected ourselves, whether from rain or pain, of how these words had been with Mother since she was five years old and how they might be the only thing that never abandoned her and that she never abandoned.

The Lake District

After arrival at the Lake District, Clara soon finds that she’s “artfully tied to this place without ever having been here.” Then there’s Charlie…. But Clara doesn’t come to England to fall in love. She came to solve the mystery of her mother and why her mother abandoned her at age eight.

Once in the Lake District, however, Clara must find not only the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind, but the courage to fall in love again – and the strength to forgive.

Mystery

The Story She Left Behind is a mystery. But without the hard lines and sharp edges of a traditional murder mystery or thriller. It’s softer. More subtle. It’s a literary mystery about one woman’s search for her long-lost mother and by extension, herself. Her history. Her roots. Her family. As Clara Herrington struggles to understand the hows and whys of her mother’s sudden disappearance, Clare meets a variety of clues and codes. These include memories of a fire. Woodlands soaked in green. A stone wall. Violets. Adorium. Indeed, this story plays out like a finely tuned symphony as it builds toward a shattering crescendo.

Exquisite

The writing in this book is exquisite. Elegant. Eloquent. Crisp without being prickly. Or stuffy. The narrative has a luminous, lyrical quality that’s almost incandescent. Magical and mystical, the story feels like you just landed in Camelot. Or may Oz. Or Pemberley. The POV shifts between Clara (first person) and Charlie (third person). You’re soon immersed in the bucolic quietude and gentle beauty of England’s Lake District with its vibrant gardens, emerald forests and shimmering lakes. This evocative and uber engaging story unfolds here. It’s the perfect setting for a story about being lost. And being found.

There you are.

Like…

In fact, reading this book is like when your taste buds get ready for a delicious bite of chocolate cake with double fudge sauce and you bite into a luscious slice of raspberry white chocolate cheesecake instead. With extra whipped cream. And a cherry. And some cookies ‘n cream ice cream on the side. And a banana split. Kimber: And a nice, thick, juicy porterhouse steak! What?

Think J.M. Barries meets Roald Dahl meets Rick Steeves. The Story She Left Behind – it’s not the book she left behind, but the story  – is a little Tolkien. A little Frances Hodgson Burnett. Throw in a dash of Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Saving Mr. Banks. Stir. Pour out one of the most hauntingly beautiful books we’ve read all year – “inspired by real events but is a work of fiction.”

The only other book we’ve read that so expertly conveys the intense longing and loneliness encountered in The Story She Left Behind is Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds.

An Experience

Indeed, reading this book is an experience. Like the first day of summer vacation. Waking up on Christmas morning. Snuggling under cozy quilts while a winter storm howls around the eaves, rattling at the windows to get in. You’re warm and snug inside, buried beneath a mountain of fuzzy blankets with a flashlight and a hot cuppa. Maybe some extra hot fudge sauce. And a little bit of pixie dust.

Our Rating: 4.5