![]() ![]() The novel centers on three women who have been touched by this man and on their work as welders in a Wisconsin, shipyard during World War II. A 1913 tragedy–the Italian Hall panic, or massacre, that occurred in Calumet, Michigan when someone maliciously yelled “Fire!” in a hall crowded with the families of striking mine workers, causing seventy-three deaths–creates an attitude in one young man that affects his wife and family for the next century. ![]() If I Gave My Heart to Know This is shaped by the shared history that impinges on the lives of its characters. The story is told from several different points of view, as Baker builds the mosaic of tragedy that defines one family’s life over a century. In this book, the reader is led across big jumps in time, from 2000 to 1913, and back again, with long stops in the 1940s. Her second novel, I Gave My Heart to Know This, will probably have a similar appeal, despite the fact that Baker’s ambitions are even larger. Clearly Baker touched a chord with this tale that sprawled across generations even as it focused on the life of a woman in 1950s America. Since it was published in 2007–to good, if occasionally mixed, reviews–its reputation has continued to grow as the book has been passed from hand to hand, from book club to book club. Ellen Baker’s first novel, Keeping the House, has had the kind of success that’s not supposed to be possible anymore. ![]()
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