I Gave My Heart to Know This

June 20, 2011
Baker (Keeping the House) mixes past and present, love and loss, forgiveness and renewal in this sensitive cross-generational story of the lingering effects of WWII. As part of the war effort, Grace Anderson works as a welder in a Wisconsin shipyard along with her friend Lena Maki, and Lena's mother, Violet. But a woman's role also means writing letters to the boys overseas, boosting their morale and making promises for the future. Grace gets entangled in multiple love-letter affairs when Lena is desperate to give her twin brother, Derrick, hope, and Grace cooperates even though she is already committed to her high school sweetheart, Alex. Adding to her confusion is Joe, a railroad worker sent home with rheumatic fever, who is conveniently present and available. As the war grimly drags on, Grace's choice is sadly made for her. Fast forward to modern-day Wisconsin, when Lena's granddaughter, Julia, living at the family farm, distracts herself from her own recent loss by tracking Grace and Lena through old letters and photographs. As Julia tries to piece together their scattered history and repair her relationship with her own brother, Danny, WWII looms large as a character. 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.

July 1, 2011
Pressed into Rosie the Riveter service at a northern Wisconsin shipyard during WWII, Violet, her daughter, Lena, and Lena's best friend, Grace, sacrifice their health and well-being for their men serving overseas. Grace pines for her boyfriend, Alex, while Lena worries about her brother, Derrick, and Violet, burdened by a disabled husband unwilling to go to work or war, struggles to hold on to the family farm. Orchestrating a matchmaking scheme with ulterior motives, Lena urges Grace to write to Derrick, a plot that is jeopardized when Derrick is listed as missing-in-action. When Grace suddenly marries recently discharged war vet Joe and gives birth to a child, Lena's plans to secure her homestead take on new urgency. Fifty years later, a young woman finds herself caretaking the same property for her aunt, only to discover she is part of a convoluted and sinister family history. Masterfully portraying the harsh realities of women's newly acquired role in the wartime workplace, Baker's family saga brims with gothic undertones.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)