What is the author's style in the novel, What She Left Behind?

Structurally, the book is compromised of two distinct narratives, each told in mostly alternating chapters. So for example, Izzy and her contemporary plot will fill one chapter, while the next chapter will go back in time and concentrate on Clara's ordeal. Neither of the parallel plot lines intersect directly very often, instead relying on oblique and tangential connections (such as Izzy pouring through Clara's trunk) to intertwine the two characters, until the end, when both characters finally collapse the divide as Clara finally enters Izzy's plot line in the concluding chapters.

This has the effect on the reader of making the two characters truly seem alone in their respective eras. So for example, Clara is very much alone throughout most of the book, isolated not just in Willard, but by the very narrative structure itself. Clara is cut off and isolated in a horrific past, and try as she may to solve the mystery of Clara's aborted life, Izzy is likewise "trapped" in her own contemporary series of conflicts.

In the end, the structure collapses into one story thread, Izzy's, but with Clara as the climatic character who appears to resolve the former split narrative into one cohesive whole. By having Clara meet with Izzy at the story's near conclusion, the author brings both stories to a simultaneous climax, neatly resolving the book's central conflict experienced by Izzy of having to somehow track Clara's life story. In the end, the two story lines "meet" and structurally the story is concluded.