Bøger af Ellen Baker

"A family secret, a DNA test, a journey as rich and colorful as the early-day circus itself. Through Cecily Larson's hidden life, Ellen Baker tenderly examines personal determination, lost love, family ties, and our innate need to discover our own truth." - Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours and Before and AfterOrphan Train meets Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in this compelling multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make. In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson's mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she's made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the "little sister" to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she's found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected-and dangerous-course. In 2015, Cecily is now 94 and living a quiet life in Minnesota, with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson. But when her family decides to surprise her with an at-home DNA test, the unexpected results not only bring to light the tragic love story that Cecily has kept hidden for decades but also throw into question everything about the family she's raised and claimed as her own for nearly seventy years. Cecily and everyone in her life must now decide who they really are and what family-and forgiveness-really mean. Sweeping through a long period of contemporary history, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson is an immersive, compelling, and entertaining family drama centered around one remarkable woman and her determination to survive.

En fortælling om fire generationer .I 1924 afleverer Cecily Larsons mor modvilligt sin fireårige datter på et børnehjem i Chicago og lover at vende tilbage, når hun har tjent penge nok til at forsørge dem begge. Men hun vender aldrig tilbage, og kort efter den livlige Cecily fylder syv år, bliver hun solgt til et omrejsende cirkus. Her føler Cecily endelig, at hun har fundet den familie, hun længes efter. Men som årene går, begynder revnerne i hendes lille verden at vise sig. Og da teenageren Cecily møder og forelsker sig i en ung havnearbejder ved navn Lucky, bliver hun kastet ud på en uventet og farlig færd. Om de familier vi fødes ind i, og dem vi selv vælger. Med alt hvad det indebærer af kærlighed, svigt, og viljen til at overleve på trods.

?A sprawling, beautiful delight of a novel spanning nearly a century as four generations gradually peel back the layers of long-buried family secrets that may just change everything. ... I immensely enjoyed this sweeping, heartrending, emotional roller coaster of a tale, which made me laugh, cry, and think about the true meaning of family. ? Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris DaughterOrphan Train meets Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in this compelling multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make.In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson's mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she's made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the ?little sister? to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she's found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected?and dangerous?course.In 2015, Cecily is now 94 and living a quiet life in Minnesota, with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson. But when her family decides to surprise her with an at-home DNA test, the unexpected results not only bring to light the tragic love story that Cecily has kept hidden for decades but also throw into question everything about the family she's raised and claimed as her own for nearly seventy years. Cecily and everyone in her life must now decide who they really are and what family?and forgiveness?really mean.Sweeping through a long period of contemporary history, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson is an immersive, compelling, and entertaining family drama centered around one remarkable woman and her determination to survive.

"In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson's mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she's made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she's sold to a traveling circus to perform as the 'little sister' to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she's found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected--and dangerous-- course"--

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.Advance praise for Keeping the House"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. Her portrayal of the American housewife is hilarious and heartbreaking. I couldn't have liked it more!”-Fannie Flagg, author of Can't Wait to Get to Heaven"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: both the 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, author of The Deep End of the Ocean"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 in wonderful, spot-on historical detail.”-Faith Sullivan, author of Gardenias and The Cape Ann"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, she 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. I look forward to every delicious book this author writes.”-Bev Marshall, author of Walking Through Shadows and Right as Rain