Restoring a crumbling manor for its new owners, conservator Ada Wren keeps finding a name scratched beneath the wallpaper — a girl no record admits existed. As the house gives up its layers, so does the village that buried her, and Ada learns that some restorations are really excavations.
Behind the Story with Clara Bennett
We sat down with Clara Bennett to talk about the writing journey behind The Whispers of the Past, and what’s next.
Each discovery reframes the one before it. That was the part that took the longest to get right, and the part I’m proudest of now that it’s done.
Ada is stubborn, exacting, and easy to root for.
The Whispers of the Past is an atmospheric gothic mystery about inherited silence, and what surfaces when a house is finally allowed to speak.
I’m already deep into something new — I can’t say too much yet, but it carries the same questions The Whispers of the Past left me with.