Book Review: Keeping the House (Random House, 2007) by Ellen Baker

By Amanda Linsmeier
Keeping the House (Random House, 2007) is a page-turning family saga by Ellen Baker. Dolly Magnuson is a housewife in the 1950’s who thought marriage would be easy. All she has to do is be the perfect homemaker, or so she thinks. But when her husband Byron moves her away from her family to the small town of Pine Rapids, WI, it doesn’t take long before she feels lonely and restless. Dolly tries to keep busy by keeping the house and joining the Ladies Aid quilting circle. At the quilting meetings, she is quickly drawn into the dramatic tales surrounding Pine Rapids once-prominent Mickelson family. Dolly becomes obsessed with the family and drawn to the empty Mickelson house. Before long, Dolly is pulled into the Mickelson world. As she becomes more and more involved in their lives, she becomes less satisfied with her own. Keeping the House swings through time, from 1896 to 1950 and through three generations. It explores Dolly’s obsession with the Mickelson house and its former owners as well as the secrets that led to the family’s unraveling.

I enjoyed this debut novel by Ellen Baker. I did have some difficulty moving through history as each chapter touched on a different time, but I liked it nonetheless. One of the most charming points was the excerpts from archived issues of Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal that began many chapters. These pieces of advice to housewives of that era were intriguing and somewhat surprising to me as a wife in 2008. Keeping the House is an interesting lesson in history and culture at a time when women didn’t have many choices in their lives. It is an intriguing and suspenseful tale I couldn’t put down. I couldn’t wait to find out the Mickelson’s fate; in fact, I stayed up till 2 a.m. one night so that I could finish the book. This novel is full with stories of passion and forbidden dreams. It explores men’s struggles with heroism and war and women’s issues surrounding love, identity and conformity. Keeping the House is a relatable novel about marriage, family and the trials that befall each and every one of us, now and then.

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