THE FORGOTTEN ROOM
New York Times bestselling authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig present a masterful collaboration—a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century….
1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.
Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel’s portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?
New York Times bestselling authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig present a masterful collaboration—a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century….
1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.
Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel’s portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother? In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room?
The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers.
- NAL
- Hardcover
- January 2016
- 384 Pages
- 9780451474629
Buy the Book
$26.00
About Karen White, Beatriz Williams & Lauren Willig
Karen White is the New York Times bestselling author of eighteen novels including A Long Time Gone, The Time Between, After the Rain, and Sea Change. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband and two children near Atlanta, Georgia.
Beatriz Williams lives with her husband and children in Greenwich, Connecticut. She is the author of Overseas.
Lauren Willig is the New York Times bestselling and RITA Award winning author of the Pink Carnation novels. She has a graduate degree in English history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She now writes full time, and lives in New York City.
Praise
“Even with three authors, the story is seamless, and the transitions between narrators are smooth. Focusing on both a family and a single location throughout time makes for a compelling and emotionally worthwhile novel.”—Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
The Forgotten Room has three different stories and three different main characters woven together into one big story, all taking place at the same mansion. Did you like or empathize more with one particular story line or protagonist?
The Forgotten Room is deliberately written as a puzzle—each chapter and character adds another piece to solving the puzzle. At what point did you figure out the truth of what really happened in each story? When did you start to realize the connections between Olive, Lucy, and Kate?
Social class differences are explored in all three story lines. For the characters, do you think that the differences in social class are more important or less so than the differences caused by wealth and education?
Even though none of the women is an artist, art is one of the important elements that links all three stories and the characters. What kind of role does art play in your life?
As the protagonist who sets everything in motion, Olive’s decision to leave Harry and marry Hans has repercussions for several characters in the generations that follow. Do you think Olive made a mistake in leaving or that she should have trusted Harry? What choice would you have made?
The history of the Pratt mansion has been fictionalized but is based on a real mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Have you ever visited a house with the kind of history the Pratt mansion has or imagined the type of people who lived and worked in such a place?
The title refers to the attic room, which has a secret compartment built into the fireplace. Do you have a special place in your home where you keep or hide items?
The complicated relationship between mothers and daughters is a major aspect of the novel, with three generations of women who felt loved but estranged from their mothers. Why do you think that none of them seemed to have been close to her mother? Why do you think neither Olive nor Lucy ever just tell their daughters the truth?