Keeping the House
BY ellen baker
In 1950, new bride Dolly Magnuson finds making marriage work is harder than it looks in the pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal and loses herself to dreams of the vacant house on the hill and the stories of the family that lived there. “An unforgettable novel about small-town life and big matters of the heart.”
"Ellen Baker's first novel is a wonder! Keeping the House is a great big juicy family saga, a romantic page-turner with genuine characters written with a perfect sense of history, time and place."
- Fannie Flagg
Winner, Great Lakes Book Award
A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year
An Insider Discovery of the Literary Guild
Featured Selection, Doubleday Book Club
A BookSense Notable Book
A Midwest Connections Pick
A Heartland Indie Bestseller
Featured Selection, Random House Reader’s Circle
GET YOUR COPY
ABOUT THE BOOK
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—keeping the house, supporting her husband’s career, fretting about dinner menus. She even gives up her dream of flying an airplane, and instead tries 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, and she begins to lose herself in piecing together the shocking story of three generations of Mickelson men and women: Wilma, 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 the First World War; 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 and she seeks answers from JJ’s stories of his family’s past, KEEPING THE HOUSE moves back and forth in time, exploring themes of wartime heroism and passionate love, of the struggles of men with fatherhood and war, of women with conformity, identity, forbidden dreams and love.
Rich in period atmosphere and in 1950s detail, 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.
Praise for Keeping the House
“Ellen Baker has written the novel I've been waiting to read for a very long time. It's the book you want to curl up with, the book you rush home to, the book you wish you'd written. In KEEPING THE HOUSE Ellen Baker serves up the complexities of family relationships, the anguish of victims of wars, the innermost thoughts of women, and the social mores of the past. Seasoned with mysteries that kept me devouring pages, this is one huge gourmet feast of a book for readers to savor.”
- Bev Marshall
"A born storyteller, Ellen Baker has written an enthralling family saga filled with three generations of memorable characters and capturing the dreams and frustrations of twentieth century women. Wonderful, spot-on historical detail."
- Faith Sullivan
"Brimming with luscious details that authenticate the story's various time periods, from early to mid-twentieth century, Baker's accomplished, ambitious debut novel is a majestic, vibrant multigenerational saga in the finest tradition of the genre."
- Booklist
"Ellen Baker’s first novel, KEEPING THE HOUSE, is a quilt that grids a small Midwestern town in the middle of the last century. Under this writer’s deft hands, each square is a story, a mystery, an indiscretion, a tale of the great house and grand family who once ruled there. Even more, it captures the roles of women then, living embodiments of demure ideals, and those who couldn’t fit the pattern. Edith Wharton’s novels of domestic despair and display come to mind with each page."
- Jacquelyn Mitchard
"A family saga spanning 50 years is truly a grand accomplishment -- especially when executed as beautifully as Ellen Baker's KEEPING THE HOUSE. From the very first page I was so effortlessly drawn under the spell of her authentic characters and wonderful storytelling that I found myself becoming petulant whenever real life vied for my attention... a superb debut from a bright new talent."
- Book-of-the-Month Club
"I absolutely loved KEEPING THE HOUSE and will say that it has become one of my favorite books I have ever read. I loved the character and plot development and the periods in which the story was set... Rich in detail...thought provoking and moving. An edge-of-your-seat gripping tale of family secrets and love lost and won."
- Planet Books
THE STORY BEHIND THE BOOK
The first seeds of KEEPING THE HOUSE were planted when I was a junior in college and I got a summer internship at a local historical society in Ephraim, Wisconsin, a stunningly beautiful little town on the shores of Green Bay in Door County. There, I began to write a novel, the story of a family called the Mickelsons who had lost a son in World War I. It was 1919, and the Mickelsons came to their summer home in “Stone Harbor, Wisconsin” for the first summer after the war and tried to pretend nothing had happened. I was interested in the process of grieving a violent death, as well as in the workings of denial. When I created Jack Mickelson, a young Marine just back from the trenches, I also became interested in what during World War I was called “shell shock,” and what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
After college, I spent a year working at a living history farm called The Homeplace, located near Dover, Tennessee. Here, I learned how to quilt by hand, and spent many hours gathered around the quilt frame with my co-workers trading stories and gossip. Then it was on to grad school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. I was in the American Studies department, and my focus was on ideas about marriage, gender identity, sexuality, and nationalism during the early 20th century, especially during World War I. Leaving grad school with a master’s in 2000, I went back to Ephraim, Wisconsin, to work ¾-time at the historical society, determined to devote every bit of my spare time to revising my novel about the Mickelsons.
But on my spring break trip that March of 2000, I met Jay Baker, a soldier in the 101st Airborne, stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He was only 21, and he told me before I left to drive back north that he had fallen for me. “Head over heels, I think is the term,” he said, with an endearing humility and a little laugh.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In Dolly’s life and the lives of the characters in this novel, the Mickelson house is personified as a character in the book. Why do you think Dolly was initially drawn to the house and intrigued by its history? Also, discuss the different contextual meanings of the title Keeping the House.
2. Mrs. Fryt is very sure that she knows the Mickelsons and their story inside out. Did you believe the stories that she and the other women in the quilting circle told? How did seeing the Mickelson family from both the inside and the outside influence the way you thought of the family? Of the town?
3. Throughout the novel, several quotes from past magazines appear (particularly from Ladies’ Home Journal in the 1950s), giving advice to housewives. Find a few of these quotes and discuss: How do these tips illustrate the change or evolution of the 20th Century housewife? Do you think any of the tips are valid or helpful today?
4. Keeping the House explores the societal constraints imposed on various generations of women. Do you feel that Dolly, living as a housewife in the 1950s, has more choices and independence than Wilma did in the late 1800s? Why or why not? Do you think that American society places social constraints on women today? If so, how are the constraints similar or different?
5. The first and second World Wars provide a backdrop throughout the story. How does Baker portray the conflicts? Do you believe that the wars excuse John and JJ’s treatment of women?
6. Dolly experiences problems when she finds herself unable to stifle her desire for a more extraordinary life. Wilma, too, struggles to control her “selfish” desire to play the piano. What did you think of the way each character handled this conflict between desire and duty? What could each have done to avoid the crises that arose due to their actions? Do you think the obligations that each felt were real or imagined? Do you think Wilma’s and Dolly’s obligations were products of the times in which they lived?
7. Discuss Dolly’s desire for a child. Do you think she truly wanted to have a child, or was she attempting this to fit into the “perfect housewife” model? Elaborate.
8. What about the men in the novel, and their obligations? Discuss what you think Byron, Jack, and John felt about their obligations and responsibilities. Do you think obligations are of an inherently different nature for men and women? Why or why not? How are the obligations of women and men different or the same today?
9. Do you think the rumored curse on the Mickelson house impacted the choices that members of the family made? Why or why not? Do you agree or disagree with Dolly’s conclusion that the family used the curse as “an excuse for their bad behavior”? Do you think things might have gone differently for the family had there been no rumor of a curse?
10. Each character in the novel seems to have a different idea about what love is and what it means to love. In 1917, Wilma believes that “her love for [her children] had been holding her hostage in this town, this house, for more than twenty years” (page 73). What do you think Wilma learns about love over the course of the novel? Discuss what JJ, Elissa, Nick, John, Jack, Harry, Byron, and Dolly do for love in the novel, and what they learn about love. Do you think that by the end of the novel they’ve learned enough to stop hurting one another? Or do you think their destructive patterns will continue?
11. Discuss Dolly’s motivations for her initial attendance and then continued attendance in the quilting circle. Do you think she was compelled to attend for more than curiosity about the Mickelsons?
12. Weigh in on the quilting circle’s argument (pages 101, 273). Who do you blame for the Mickelson family’s downfall? Explain why you feel this way.
13. Wilma says that John “was the only one who always seemed able to forgive her” (page 348) — do you agree with her perception? Why do you think she, in turn, is unable to forgive John? What do Harry, JJ, and Anne learn about forgiveness? What do Dolly and Byron?
14. Despite the fact that the whole Mickelson family has left Pine Rapids, their memory is preserved in the minds of the community members, and tangible reminders of their existence remain in the house and in the bronze statue of Chase in the courthouse square. In fact, JJ is only lonely for his family after he leaves Pine Rapids, since they seem to be so present in that town. What do you think Dolly learns about the significance of story-telling and memory? What purpose do you think the Mickelson family’s story serves for the people of Pine Rapids?
GET YOUR COPY
Available in hardcover, paperback, and audio