Keeping the House
SKU: 86345330925

Keeping the House

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Keeping the HouseBy: Ellen Baker Set in the conformist 1950s and reaching back to span two world wars, Ellen Bakers 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 Ottos How to Make an American Quilt in its intimate portrayal of womens lives, and reminiscent of novels by Elizabeth Berg and Anne Tyler, Keeping the House is a rich tapestry of

By: Ellen Baker     
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
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SKU: 86345330925

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4.4 ★★★★★
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B shops here too much
Massapequa, US
★★★★★ 2
My raptor GSP destroyed this dino toy
Color: Medium - Dilophosaurus, Color: Medium - Dilophosaurus
My dog ripped this toy apart faster than the trex did the lawyer in Jurassic Park. 2 hours! Arm was ripped off, stuffing pulled out methodically over the next to days. Now it is a gutless husk. The metor was kinder to the og dinos than my gsp was to this. Sorry Bite Force. Open to product sampling tho!
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2026
E
Verified Purchase
Edward Williams
West Palm Beach, US
★★★★★ 4
My Hero pup is super happy with it
Color: Large - Billy the Beast Monster
I was super excited to order this and had waited some time to do so. I wanted Big Billy The Beast Monster in large Green, he’s an awesome looking guy. My Golden Retriever was all over me while I was up packaging Him and his tail was in helicopter mode. He was so excited to have it and carried it around the house everywhere we went, he’s laying on me with his head in my lap and Billy’s right next to him. Reason for buying it? Well he loves plushies but there are not many available out there that can stand up to this 80 pound chew monster so I have to keep him on harder stuff, 2 of which are the cheapest toy skull and crosses in orange and blue from a cheap outlet site but he loves them. Orange was first then when we pulled out the blue one he had a aha moment. Now with Billy he was on a whole new level of excitement, I’ve never seen him this excited over a toy, he can’t stop carrying it with him everywhere and showing it off to the other pups I have, there’s no growling or resource guarding but he definitely won’t want to share and that’s of because I always take away any plushies that he gets to because he is serious about chewing. This being made with Kevlar gave me hopes of longevity but he had the ears and the end of 1 hand chewed off in under 2 hours, am I disappointed…yea a little but he has gotten so much joy out of it that it’s made me really happy to have bought it anyway, see he’s my Service Dog so he spends a lot of time being so serious and working that he needs any outlet for spending energy possible and he’s so happy with it that it makes me happy. As I’m writing this he’s asleep with his head in my lap and Billy right next to him looking very tired and happy and that my friends is worth all the beans in the world.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2026
J
Verified Purchase
Jodie Lott
Waukegan, US
★★★★★ 5
Survives agressiveness
Color: Large - Billy the Beast Monster
This toy is absolutely for aggressive chewers,my yorkies usually have their stuffed animals torn apart within a day,been a week and not 1 rip! Very happy with it and worth the money!!!
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Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2026
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John
San Leandro, US
★★★★★ 4
Great except for one small flaw
Color: Regular - Beak, Color: Regular - Beak
Our dog likes to get at the juicy innards of every toy we buy him. We tried this one as it promised to be "bullet proof". It lasted about a week which in fairness is 6.5 days longer than most of the toys we buy last. He ripped off the wings which was to be expected and not an issue. It took him another 6 days to finally locate a weak point and break in. It appears that the tag is not made of kevlar but merely sewed on. I guess it would be better if they had just sewed it on top but they made it part of the overall structural integrity. This provided a small area of weakness which our dog located and proceeded to exploit. It's like having the death star but installing a small thermal exhaust port that allows for access to the very core of the station. Makes little sense. Overall I am pleased with the overall sturdiness but in the end this toy had a small design flaw that my dog was able to locate and exploit in his neverending quest to gain access to and eat polyester fiber stuffing
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Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2026
K
Verified Purchase
Kym Brunner
Pawtucket, US
★★★★★ 5
STRONG AS A MONSTER (albeit a cute one)
Color: Large - Billy the Beast Monster, Color: Large - Billy the Beast Monster
My aggressive chewer ate the adorable monster's ear off on the first day, but who cares? The body of the monster has been indestructible so far (one week). My 7 month old pup cbews it for a good 10-15 minutes at a time several times per day. Great quality product and outlasting all the other toys I bought (which she destroyed in 10 minutes - even the ones rated "Level 4 toughness" from Walmart. I think it's hilarious in my photo that the monster's expression perfectly shows his disappointment about missing an ear, LOL.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2026

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