What She Left Behind - My First Ellen Marie Wiseman - And Definitely NOT My Last

Let me start by discussing the concept of waterworks.  We all know some definitions for that, right?  It could be rain or falls or displays.  Or it could be crying.  Guess which one it was for me?  Uh, huh.  Yep.  I cried more the last 6 pages of What She Left Behind than I think I have for any whole book.  I mean the tears were rolling down my face.  You all know that "tearing up" is not so unusual for me.  But this was ridiculous.  In fact, I teared up thinking about it later!  Okay, let's move on to the storyline:

Ten years ago, Izzy Stone's mother fatally shot her father while he slept. Devastated by her mother's apparent insanity, Izzy, now seventeen, refused to visit her in prison.  But her new foster parents, employees at the local museum, have enlisted Izzy's help in cataloguing items at a long-shuttered state asylum.  There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past.
Clara Cartwright, eighteen years old in 1929, is caught between her overbearing parents and her love for an Italian immigrant.  Furious when she rejects an arranged marriage, Clara's father sends her to a genteel home for nervous invalids.  But when his fortune is lost in the stock market crash, he can no longer afford her care - and Clara is committed to the public asylum.
Even as Izzy deals with the challenges of yet another new beginning, Clara's story keeps drawing her into the past.  If Clara was never really mentally ill, could something else explain her own mother's violent act? Piecing together Clara's fate compels Izzy to re-examine her own choices - with shocking and unexpected results.

Man is this book good.  I know that people get tired of the back-and-forth in time.  I do not happen to be one of those people; especially when it's done so well.  I mentioned the late crying.  But I was overwhelmed with a whole bunch of emotions throughout the book.  I had:  raised eyebrows, chills, jaw-dropping, many OMG exclamations, and even a "What?"

Let me be clear:  As you might imagine from the blurb, some of what happens to both Clara and Izzy is hard to read.  And that's because Ellen does such a good job of making you feel for, and care about, both of them.

I've got a short list of some personal and cultural connections that came from WSLB:

1.  There is a YA fantasy by A.R. Silverberry, called Wyndano's Cloak, that I love.  The book rotates between the 2 protagonists.  And every time a chapter ended, I was disappointed.  Then I would read the next chapter and be disappointed when that one ended.  That is the case here, going back and forth between Clara and Izzy.
2.  My favorite Jodi Picoult (I've read all of her adult books) is called The Storyteller.  In that one, there are fairly short chapters in the voice of several characters.  And then there is one chapter that is super long and very appropriate.  That is the case in this one too.
3.  There is a reference in one of Izzy's chapters to wine coolers.  This is 1995, after all.  I have a big birthday coming up in which I will be reliving my wine cooler past, much to the (guarded) delight of my children.  I will let you know how that goes after it's over.
4.  There is one scene that reminds me of Barry Manilow's song, Copacabana.  How random is that?

Needless to say, I am highly recommending What She Left Behind.  I'm already looking forward to reading Ellen's other 2 books.  4/4