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

Isabelle, who goes by Izzy, is 17 and a protagonist of What She Left Behind. She has “silver-blue eyes, black hair, and a bone white complexion” (7), as well as “long slender arms and legs” (7), but her arms are covered in scars from self-harm. Izzy always wears long sleeves to hide these marks, which symbolize the trauma she has endured: Her biological mother shot her father when she was seven, and Izzy went to live with her grandmother. After her grandmother died, Izzy lived with several foster families.

Through all of this, Izzy remains “naive” and represses the worst of her childhood trauma—a coping mechanism echoed in her refusal to read her mother’s letters from prison, which she is afraid will trigger a mental illness. Once she reads them, they reveal that Izzy’s mother killed her father because he was molesting Izzy. Izzy learning the truth from these letters makes her determined to show Clara’s daughter her mother’s journal so that she will understand what Clara went through and not live with the same fears and misconceptions that Izzy has. Reuniting Clara with her daughter thus helps Izzy heal as well: In an example of