Books: This old house and its family secrets

From the first page of Ellen Baker's debut novel, "Keeping the House," it is obvious this Wisconsin native has a promising literary career ahead. Clearly influenced by such diverse forebears as Michael Cunningham and Minneapolis native Lorna Landvik, Baker proves -- proudly, definitively -- that she's got the stuff.

The only problem? She's got too much stuff.

At the outset of this century-long saga of marital disharmony, Baker seems poised to lithely juggle its genuinely interesting characters. All too soon, however, it becomes clear that there's enough material and diverting plotline for two -- or even three -- novels.

Setting the bar high, Baker weaves back and forth through time and generations. Some chapters spirit readers to the late 19th century, into the life of Wilma Mickelson, who leaves college and marries unhappily into a wealthy Pine Rapids family; other chapters explore the convoluted wartime exploits of Wilma's children and grandchildren. The story of an understimulated 1950s housewife, Dolly Magnuson, provides a counterpoint to these tales as the town newcomer becomes increasingly bored by her own life and fascinated by the Mickelsons' now-abandoned house.

The family home around which Baker has constructed "Keeping the House" is rumored to have been built upon an Indian burial ground, cursing its residents to lifetimes of doomed love. By the end of the story, however, this house-centric theme has hushed to nothing more than a whisper as the intertwining tales become less centralized, more geographically far-flung.

Baker uses small-town gossip sessions to great effect. The likable young Dolly manages to transform a snooze-fest of a quilting club into a juicy opportunity for information-gathering that readers will enjoy. She also nails the vernacular of each time period. And her artful descriptions put her leagues ahead of other recent debuts in this genre -- one that teeters somewhere between commercial women's and literary fiction.

"Pine Rapids was postcard-still under a snow-colored sky, houses and trees bearing up under heavy loads of snow, lights burning in windows. Only an occasional car purred past on the white-frosted streets."

To underscore the misery of many of the female characters residing on those white-frosted streets, Baker cleverly kicks off each chapter with a dreary quote from mid-century women's magazines (" ... you should continue your efforts to improve in your job as housekeeper, mother, and wife").

Oddly enough, however, for all the novel's feminist overtones, Baker occasionally lapses into some regrettable imagery. A town that had once been "exciting, fresh, and bewitching" is described as beginning to feel "garish, repulsive, as with a lover who'd always seemed beautiful in candlelight whom you now saw naked in sunlight, eyeliner caked into crow's-feet, blotchy skin, swirls of light brown hair all over her body."

Even readers who are genuinely rooting for Baker and her clever premise during the first half of "Keeping the House" will catch themselves shrinking from the book's latter portion, filled with the schmaltzy plot twists of a 1940s RKO picture. In spite of her talent for storytelling and a canny Landvik-like ear for dialogue, Baker's foundation needs some major tuck-pointing.

Andrea Hoag also reviews and writes for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in Lawrence, Kan.