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Title details for Keeping the House by Ellen Baker - Available

Keeping the House

A Novel

by Ellen Baker
ebook
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Set in the conformist 1950s and reaching back to span two world wars, Ellen Baker’ s superb novel is the story of a newlywed who falls in love with a grand abandoned house and begins to unravel dark secrets woven through the generations of a family. Like Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt in its intimate portrayal of women’ s lives, and reminiscent of novels by Elizabeth Berg and Anne Tyler, Keeping the House is a rich tapestry of a novel that introduces a wonderful new fiction writer.
When Dolly Magnuson moves to Pine Rapids, Wisconsin, in 1950, she discovers all too soon that making marriage work is harder than it looks in the pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Dolly tries to adapt to her new life by keeping the house, supporting her husband’s career, and fretting about dinner menus. She even gives up her dream of flying an airplane, trying instead to fit in at the stuffy Ladies Aid quilting circle. Soon, though, her loneliness and restless imagination are seized by the vacant house on the hill. As Dolly’s life and marriage become increasingly difficult, she begins to lose herself in piecing together the story of three generations of Mickelson men and women: Wilma Mickelson, who came to Pine Rapids as a new bride in 1896 and fell in love with a man who was not her husband; her oldest son, Jack, who fought as a Marine in the trenches of World War I; and Jack’s son, JJ, a troubled veteran of World War II, who returns home to discover Dolly in his grandparents’ house.
As the crisis in Dolly’s marriage escalates, she not only escapes into JJ’s stories of his family’s past but finds in them parallels to her own life. As Keeping the House moves back and forth in time, it eloquently explores themes of wartime heroism and passionate love, of the struggles of men’s struggles with fatherhood and war and of women’s conflicts with issues of conformity, identity, forbidden dreams, and love.
Beautifully written and atmospheric, Keeping the House illuminates the courage it takes to shape and reshape a life, and the difficulty of ever knowing the truth about another person’s desires. Keeping the House is an unforgettable novel about small-town life and big matters of the heart.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 10, 2007

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781588366290

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781588366290
      • File size: 4044 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 5, 2007
      Baker's first novel is a long and uneven multigeneration family saga set in small town Wisconsin. In 1896, Wilma comes to the rough backwoods town of Pine Rapids as the alarmed new bride of a lumber baron's first son, John Mickelson. Wilma is already regretting her jump from college to matrimony when she gets off the train and promptly falls in love: first with her brother-in-law, Gust, and then with the beautiful home on a hill that is now hers. Counterpointing Wilma's unhappy trial by marriage and motherhood is a complementary story set in 1950, when another new bride comes to Pine Bluff. Unlike Wilma, Dolly Magnuson married the man she wanted desperately. Unable to conceive, she is determined to be the perfect housewife, a plan that morphs into an obsession with the old Mickelson house, now unlived in and uncared for. The novel expands to encompass the stories of the grown Mickelson children: as Dolly begins taking care of the house, and the Mickelsons begin entering and exiting it by way of a window. Stuffed to bursting with stories of love, loss, revenge, obsession, emotional and physical violence, and general familial mayhem, Baker's book makes readers work to sort out the fates of the most engaging characters.

    • Library Journal

      July 1, 2007
      Newlywed Dolly Magnuson tries to be the perfect 1950s wife but quickly becomes restless in little Pine Rapids, WI, far from friends and family. Intrigued by the grand Michelson house on a hill not far from her bungalow, Dolly begins to visit the abandoned mansion on the slydusting, polishing, and imagining the house her own. From quilting circle gossip, Dolly gradually pieces together the story of the ill-fated Michelson family, and when the charmingly dissolute J.J. Michelson moves back to the house, Dolly's boring days become interesting. Unfortunately, the Michelsons, who so fascinate Dolly as she ferrets out their stories, never emerge as than stock characters. Several story lines (interposed with Dolly's) seem promising, but it's hard to care. Even Dolly's new friend J.J. (tormented by his past), Dolly's husband (unwilling to open up), and Dolly herself (sorting out her feelings for both men) never fully come to life. Some humor might have enlivened the tired theme of marriage as compromise in this debut. An optional purchase where women's fiction is popular.Laurie A. Cavanaugh, Brockton P.L., MA

      Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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