What She Left Behind: A Haunting and Heartbreaking Story of 1920s Historical Fiction

In What She Left Behind, Wiseman focuses on an institution called Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane and, later, Willard Psychiatric State Hospital. This was a real place, named for New York’s Surgeon General Dr. Sylvester D. Willard, on New York’s Seneca Lake. Established in 1865 and opened in 1869, Willard came into being a few years after New York’s very first asylum, Utica, was established in 1850. State-run asylums were largely the result of social reformer Dorothea Dix’s advocacy. At the time, those with mental illnesses were often subject to abuse by prisons or private contractors. Dix documented this mistreatment and worked with state legislatures in the hopes of creating better facilities.

For a number of years, Willard was the largest facility of its kind in the state, with almost 3,000 patients on 929 acres. As Wiseman notes in her novel, Willard’s first patient, Mary Rote, arrived by boat. Other narrative details are similarly true to life, including the cemetery with unmarked graves and the practice of having patients work on the grounds to grow and cook food, as well as sew and launder clothes. Wiseman’s portrayal of the modern-day investigation into Willard is also broadly accurate.