The Story She Left Behind
Patti's New Book is out Today
Our dear friend and Friends & Fiction co-founder & co-host Patti Callahan Henry’s new novel, The Story She Left Behind, is in stores everywhere today!
Named an IndieNext pick for April, a LibraryReads pick for March, one of B&N’s Best Books of March, a Heather’s Pick for Canada’s Indigo bookstore chain, a SIBA Read This Next pick, the Reader’s Digest Book Club pick for April, a Printfresh Book Club pick, and a winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, the early buzz for The Story She Left Behind is amazing. Louise Penny calls it “brilliant, riveting, so beautifully written, impossible to put down,” Shelley Read calls it a “celebration of family, hope, forgiveness, and the tender generosity of abiding love,” and Adriana Trigiani declares that Patti is “at the height of her literary powers.”
This immersive story was inspired by a real cold-case literary mystery of a child prodigy author who went missing in the 1920s, leaving behind shattered loved ones and a sequel to her most beloved novel written in a secret language that no one could decode. Patti reimagines this real-life case, introducing us to Clara, a young mother still shattered by her mother Bronwyn’s years-ago disappearance, and Clara’s precocious daughter Winnie, who’s utterly captivated by her long-lost grandmother’s stories and fictional characters. We travel with these two across the pond on a quest to track down Bronwyn’s language in hopes it might hold the key to unlock the mystery of her disappearance.
Along the way, Clara and Winnie have adventures, meet with adversity, and, with the help of the charming Englishman Charlie, begin to unravel the haunting mystery at their family’s core. Patti gives us slow burn romance, an absorbing mystery, and, as always, an enchanting story.
This captivating story takes place across three distinct settings—the languid lowcounty of South Carolina, London in peril during the Great Smog, and England’s lush and enchanting Lake District. With beautiful, descriptive prose, Patti brings each so vividly to life, that the mystical lands each become characters themselves.
William Kent Krueger calls The Story She Left Behind, “a lovely mix of so many elements sure to please [Patti’s] universe of readers, a magical mosaic of adventure, suspense, romance, mystery, and even a sprinkle of make-believe.” This is such a lovely description of this story of longing, forgiveness, the beautiful but complicated mother/daughter relationship, and the power of language, imagination, and story.
We just know you will love this book as much as we did. We encourage you to grab your copy from your local indie or on Bookshop.org, and to visit Patti on her book tour if she’s coming to a town near you!
Once you’ve fallen in love with The Story She Left Behind, we hope you will leave online reviews on sites like Goodreads and Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
About the Book
Indie Next April 2025 Pick • LibraryReads March 2025 Pick
“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, disappears 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 departure 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 beautiful 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 vanishing, 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.
Told in Patti Callahan Henry’s lyrical, enchanting prose, The Story She Left Behind is a captivating novel of mystery and family legacy that captures the profound longing for a mother and the evergreen allure of secrets.
About the Author
Patti Callahan Henry is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of eighteen novels, including The Secret Book of Flora Lea, 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, and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year. She lives in Alabama and South Carolina with her family. Find out more at PattiCallahanHenry.com.
Stay in Touch!
Subscribe to our PODCAST.
Join our FACEBOOK group.
Follow us on INSTAGRAM.
Subscribe to our YOUTUBE channel.
Find details about everything F&F on our WEBSITE.
Shop our guests’ & hosts’ books in our shop on BOOKSHOP.
Join the F&F Official BOOK CLUB with Brenda & Lisa.
Upgrade to our PAID Subscription for bonus content from our hosts and guests.
My copy is being delivered today. I am going to read it first thing!
I cannot wait to read this!!!!!!