This novel is about two women living about 60 years apart. One in present time, Izzy, a teenager who is in a foster home after her mother shot and killed her father. The other a young woman named Clara, in 1929. Their lives collide when Izzy discovers a stack of old letter and a journal belonging to Clara.
When Clara was a young woman she secretly fell in love with a poor Italian immigrant and became pregnant. When she refused to marry the man that her father, a wealthy and overbearing man, had chosen for her, he sent her away to a home for rebellious and unruly women.
After her father lost all of his wealth, he was unable to pay the cost of her care at the home and she was committed to an asylum. Living under harsh conditions and with terrible treatments in the asylum, many of the women in this asylum were there simply for making choices that their parents or husbands disagreed with, behaving in ways that didn't conform with "polite society" or just trying to assert some independence, few were actual lunatics. Many of the staff were uncaring that Clara was pregnant and forced her to give her baby up for adoption when it was born.
For Izzy, learning the story of Clara makes her realize that if Clara was sent away to an asylum but wasn't actually mentally ill, perhaps she should visit her mother to let her explain her violence and explore the story behind her mother's decision to shoot her father.
An engaging and illuminating novel that I deeply enjoyed.
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