• THE HIDDEN LIFE OF CECILY LARSON

  • KEEPING THE HOUSE

  • I GAVE MY HEART TO KNOW THIS

Now available from Mariner Books

Now available from Mariner Books

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson

Available in paperback

February 25

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson

A NOVEL

“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 Daughter

Orphan Train meets Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in this compelling multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make.

Watch the video to hear the story behind the book!

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.

Buy The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson

Previous Novels

Previous Novels

Keeping the House

A Novel

KEEPING THE HOUSE ACCOLADES

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

Featured Selection, Random House Reader's Circle

BookSense Notable Book

Midwest Connections Pick

Heartland Indie Bestseller

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 Featured Selection, Random House Reader's Circle BookSense Notable Book Midwest Connections Pick Heartland Indie Bestseller

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.

  • THE BOOK YOU WANT TO CURL UP WITH...

    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

  • AN ENTHRALLING FAMILY SAGA

    “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

  • EDITH WHARTON'S NOVELS OF DOMESTIC DESPAIR AND DISPLAY COME TO MIND WITH EACH PAGE

    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

  • ROMANTIC, HILARIOUS AND HEARTBREAKING

    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. Baker’s portrayal of the American housewife is hilarious and heartbreaking. I couldn’t have liked it more!

    Fannie Flagg

Buy Keeping the House

I Gave My Heart to Know This

A Novel

In January 1944, Grace Anderson, Lena Maki, and Lena’s mother, Violet, have joined the growing ranks of women working for the war effort.

Though they find satisfaction in their work in a Wisconsin shipyard, it isn’t enough to distract them from the anxieties of wartime, or their fears for the men they love: Lena’s twin brother, Derrick, and Grace’s high school sweetheart, Alex. When shattering news arrives from the front, the lives of all three women are pitched into turmoil. As one is pushed to the brink of madness, the others are forced into choices they couldn’t have imagined – and their lives, and their friendships, will never be the same.

More than five decades later, Violet’s great-granddaughter Julia returns to the small farmhouse where Violet and Lena once lived. Listless from her own recent tragedy, Julia begins to uncover the dark secrets that shattered her family, learning that redemption – and love – can be found in the most unexpected places.

Beautifully written and profoundly moving, I Gave My Heart to Know This is a riveting story of loyalties held and sacred bonds broken; of crushing loss and enduring dreams; and what it takes – and what it means – to find the way home.

  • Baker mixes past and present, love and loss, forgiveness and renewal in this sensitive cross-generational story of the lingering effects of WWII... Reminiscent of both A.S. Byatt's Possession and "Rosie the Riveter," Baker is at her best describing a bone-deep cold Lake Superior and the lives of the women who labored over ships as a rare but powerful part of history.

    PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY

  • Masterfully portraying the harsh realities of women's newly acquired role in the wartime workplace, Baker's family saga brims with gothic undertones.

    BOOKLIST

  • A richly satisfying sophomore effort steeped in heartbreak and history.... Baker's natural ear for the parlance of the era, site-specific and wholly believable, is but one element that makes her second novel such a cozy delight... This talented author has created familiar-seeming people whom readers will care about... What an unalloyed pleasure it is to see that Ellen Baker's writing has firmly found its footing.

    MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE

  • RICH, REAL, A CELEBRATION OF LIFE

    What a rich offering this is! Ellen Baker gives us characters who are so real, so recognizable, so likable, in spite of (or perhaps because of) their problems and secrets and frustrations and missteps; and she presents them against a story line that is epic in scope... I really loved reading this powerful and poignant book, which, though it acknowledges pain, regret and remorse, ultimately is a celebration of life.

    ELIZABETH BERG

  • A LUSCIOUS, AUTHENTIC NOVEL

    I adored this luscious novel. Its authentic details immersed me in the world of women at work during WWII...but the layered story immersed me even deeper in the secrets that get buried in generations of family history—secrets that have a way of wanting to be known, secrets we may carry without even knowing. I ached with regret for the characters, wept at their redemption, and savored every surprising turn. I loved Baker's debut novel, and this one's even better!

    KATRINA KITTLE

  • BEAUTIFULLY MADE - RACE AGAINST TIME

    Give your heart to Ellen Baker's beautifully made new novel about stern people and the stern toll of urgent words never said. From the hard-bitten bluffs of Lake Superior to the coast of California, from World War II to the present day, the mothers and daughters of two Midwestern families of immigrant stock race against time and history to break down a wall of lies, before it is too late.

    JACQUELYN MITCHARD

Buy I Gave My Heart to Know This