Fifteen years ago, Willow
Alexander was jilted at the altar by her high school sweetheart, Graham Currie,
who left their wedding rehearsal the night before knowing he would not be
returning the next day. 

Confused and devastated, Willow
remains in the small town of Glenmor in Cape Breton, caring for her ailing
parents and nursing her heartache. What no one knows is that Willow lost more
than her marriage on that shocking day, which is why she remains on her
family’s expansive property, in the shadow of Christy’s Mountain, unable to let
go of the secret she has kept hidden for more than a decade. 

Soon after her fortieth birthday,
Willow finds out that Graham is returning to town, without his new wife, after
years of working as a doctor in New York City. As Willow grapples with her
emotions, wondering how she will deal with Graham’s arrival, tragedy strikes
again: her dear friend, Kathleen, and her husband, local doctor James
Millhouse, are found dead. Willow was the last one to see the couple on the
night they died and fears that she may have accidently had a hand in their
deaths. 

Fearing both Graham’s return and her
own imminent arrest, Willow holes up in her family home, reflecting on her past
and bracing for her uncertain future. The
Girl He Left Behind is a moving story about how confronting life’s greatest
uncertainties is often the only way forward. 

“Beatrice MacNeil’s writing resembles painting, a beautifully textured, wondrously detailed painting, of absorbing incidents and characters so real and fresh that you feel you could turn a corner and bump into them in the midst of a quarrel, a cursing, a prayer, a kiss. MacNeil’s Cape Breton is a seductive, mysterious, pastoral, strange, Gothic, and violent redoubt of illicit lusts and proud blasphemies, magical faith and redemptive love.”