Bookshelf: Two March reads about plucky heroines looking for answers

Told in Henry’s lush, cozy prose, “The Story She Left Behind” (Atria Books, $29.99) begins in 1927 when 20-year-old Bronwyn, a former child prodigy who wrote the wildly popular book “The Middle Place” when she was 12, abandons her family in South Carolina late one night. She’s never heard from again, but she leaves behind the manuscript for the sequel to “The Middle Place” written in a secret language only she could decipher.

Credit: Liesa Cole Photography.jpg

Credit: Liesa Cole Photography.jpg

Fast forward 25 years. Bronwyn’s daughter Clara is a children’s book illustrator and the divorced mother of a young daughter . One day she is contacted by a stranger in London named Charlie who found an odd package in the library of his recently deceased father. Addressed to Clara, it contains the dictionary to Bronwyn’s secret language and a note demanding Clara retrieve it in person.

With her daughter in tow, Clara crosses the pond in hopes of discovering what happened to her mother and in the process finds herself falling in love.

The book is inspired by the true story of Barbara Newhall Follett, a former literary prodigy who disappeared from her home in Boston in 1939. Her fate remains unknown.

In an author’s note, Henry explains that the novel began with her interest in women writers who created secret languages to protect their words and stories from the judgment of others. Among them was Beatrix Potter, author of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.”

“The deep and wild imaginations of these real-life writers, as well as their profound connection to the natural world, held me in their grip during the writing of Bronwyn’s and Clara Harrington’s stories,” Henry writes.

A former Atlantan who now splits her time between Alabama and South Carolina, Henry cofounded the web series and podcast Friends & Fiction during the pandemic with fellow authors Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel and Kristy Woodson Harvey.

For the “The Story She Left Behind” book launch, Friends & Fiction will stream their show in front of a live audience at the Atlanta History Center on March 17. For details, go to atlantahistorycenter.com. Earlier that day, Henry will appear at FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock to read and sign books. For information go to foxtalebookshoppe.com.

Credit: Sarah Dorio

Credit: Sarah Dorio

For a complete change of pace in both time, place and tone, Atlanta author Colleen Oakley delivers “Jane and Dan at the End of the World” (Berkley, $29), a cheeky, gently satiric tale set in present-day California.

Jane is the unhappily married mother of two teenagers and a frustrated author who’s published only one book in six years, and it was a bomb. She’s convinced her husband Dan is having an affair, so on the occasion of their 19th wedding anniversary, which they’re celebrating at the renowned restaurant La Fin du Monde, she plans to tell him she wants a divorce.

But they barely get through the first course when a group of bumbling climate activists burst into the restaurant and take the diners hostage. Then things get even stranger. As the surreal situation unfolds, Jane and Dan begin to realize the scenario is weirdly similar to the plot of Jane’s failed book, even down to the activists’ dialogue. They can’t explain the eerie coincidence, but they realize they can predict what’s going to happen next, so they come together to figure out a way to thwart their captors.

Poe & Company Bookstore presents Oakley in conversation with Kristen Ness March 26 at Brookfield Country Club in Roswell. For details go to poeandcompanybookstore.com.

Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She may be reached at Suzanne.VanAtten@ajc.com.