The Story She Left Behind by Patti Callahan Henry

 Inspired by the story of a real writer who wrote her first book at age 12 and created words of her own like British authors Roald Dahl invented Gobblefunk and J.R.R. Tolkien developed Elvish, Patti Callahan Henry’s latest book is The Story She Left Behind coming out March 18.

Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham created a dictionary of her invented words and took it with her when she abandoned her family--never to be heard from again--after a fire in their home injured her daughter Clara in 1927 in Bluffton, South Carolina. Shattered by the loss of her mother, Clara has become an illustrator of children’s books as she raises her own daughter, 8-year-old Wynnie, in Clara’s childhood home where her father still lives.

Bronwyn left behind a sequel to her work but without the dictionary of created words, little hope remained for ever translating it. In 1952, Clara is contacted by a stranger in London who claims to having found her mother’s handwritten dictionary in his late father’s home. Charlie Jameson says there are instructions that Clara must pick up an envelope addressed to her in person, prompting a getaway to London for Clara and Wynnie.

Unfortunately, London is experiencing the Great Smog, attacking Wynnie’s asthmatic lungs. Charlie whisks them away to his family home in the Lake District of England, right down the road from Beatrix Potter’s home. Clara gets more than the envelope and the dictionary: a chance to discover what happened to her mother and the story she left behind.

Patti Callahan Henry, a former pediatric nurse, is a co-creator and co-host of the weekly Facebook podcast Friends and Fiction. She won the 2019 Christy Award for Christian Fiction for her book Becoming Mrs. Lewis, a historical fiction novel. A full-time author, wife, and mother of three, she has homes in both Alabama and South Carolina.