Ellen Marie Wiseman Books in Order

If you are new to Ellen Marie Wiseman: The Orphan Collector → The Lost Girls of Willowbrook → The Plum Tree.
If you want a World War II perspective from inside Germany: The Plum Tree.
If you prefer dark stories about institutions and secrets: What She Left Behind → The Lost Girls of Willowbrook.
If you like American history and social justice themes: Coal River → The Orphan Collector → The Lies They Told.
If you enjoy family secrets and dual timelines: The Life She Was Given → What She Left Behind.

Ellen Marie Wiseman writes historical novels about ordinary people pushed into the darkest corners of history. A first generation German American, she grew up in Three Mile Bay, a small community in northern New York State, listening to family stories that blurred the line between everyday life and world changing events. Those early tales, quiet but unsettling, gave her a lasting curiosity about what people endure and how they survive.

As a child, she attended first grade in one of the last one room schoolhouses in New York, where books felt as exciting as any playground. Her first homemade stories starred brave black horses and a beagle named Buffy. As a teenager she devoured the work of Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Dean Koontz, and realized just how much power a well told story could hold.

For many years, though, writing was the thing she fit in around work, chores, and the busy joy of raising kids.

When her children left for college, that daydream finally had room to grow. She returned to the stories she had heard on childhood trips to her mother's hometown in Germany, where she learned how her relatives survived poverty and the chaos of the Second World War. Out of those memories came the idea for The Plum Tree, her debut novel about a young German woman in love with the son of the Jewish family she works for.

The plot arrived so suddenly that she scribbled the first rough draft on a legal pad in just a few days. Then came the slow part: years of research, revision, and learning the craft well enough to do justice to the story that had taken hold. After more than four years of rewriting and two more years searching for an agent, The Plum Tree sold quickly and opened the door to a new life as a novelist.

Since then, her books have sold more than two million copies in the United States, been translated into over twenty languages, and found a loyal audience among book clubs and readers who gravitate toward emotionally rich historical fiction.

Each of her standalone novels explores a different hidden corner of the past. What She Left Behind links a modern foster teen with a young woman locked away in a 1920s asylum, exposing the human cost of misguided psychiatric care. Coal River follows a newcomer who dares to challenge child labor and company power in a Pennsylvania coal town, while The Life She Was Given moves between a Depression era circus and a 1950s horse farm to unravel a buried family secret.

The Orphan Collector follows a young immigrant girl's fight to reclaim her brothers during the 1918 Spanish flu in Philadelphia, and The Lost Girls of Willowbrook takes readers inside a notorious state school on Staten Island through the eyes of a teen searching for her missing twin. In The Lies They Told, she turns to 1930s Virginia and the rise of eugenics, following a young mother who refuses to accept what powerful institutions decide her family is worth. Across these stories, Wiseman returns to themes of injustice, resilience, and the quiet bravery of people who refuse to look away.

Today, Wiseman lives on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband. When she is not on a deadline, she likes to read, cook, experiment in the garden, watch movies, swim, and spend time with her grown children and grandchildren.