The setting in What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman is Willard Asylum in New York. The author was inspired to write the book after learning about the 2004 New York State Museum exhibition "Lost Cases, Recovered Lives: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic."
This is a great premise for a book that brings together the lives of two characters: one a patient at the hospital in the 1930s and the other a modern day teenager grappling with her own past while assisting on a museum project similar to Lost Cases. Unfortunately I agree with many online reviewers who found the characters flat and the dialogue clichéd. Hardly "illuminating and provocative" as described on Amazon, and I can bearly remember the "unexpected, heartrending ending"mentioned by RT Book Review. The good news is that I was able to finish reading the book and enjoyed the historical elements embedded in the plot.
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