The Dwelling Place

by Elizabeth Musser

Book Overview

At twenty, Ellie Bartholomew knows a lot about broken things.In a family of successes, she's the embarrassment, still defiantly refusing to color inside the lines. Perhaps being a server at a trendy... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764229265
• ISBN13: 9780764229268
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
• Length: 411 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

I loved reading the dwelling place . It was an incredibly well written story . And it helped me to s

It has a great message for young people who struggle with the relationship with their parents and siblings.

Emotional, compelling, passionate stories of Ellie...

Each chapter is clearly introduced by a quote from Victor Hugo, Sir Walter Scott or James Herriott. Some literary gems that enhance the stories of young, still growing Miss Ellie Barthlolomew; An emotionally, physically scarred 20 yr old lady who is searching for lost faith and healing from the emotionally scars even as a 10 yr old victim of burning. In the ending all of her problems relate to her parents, grandparents & sisters. When she spends 2 weeks on Hilton Head Island, a bit into Sea Pines Plantation near Spotted Sandpiper, Snowy Egret, Red Cardinal and Black Skimmer Lanes, she visits Harbor Town where her friend, Ben Abrams, who plays with his band at the Quarterdeck Lounge. During the day Ben is the Youth director of the Baptist Church near the South Beach! During her 2 week visit she and her cancer-ridden mother, Mary Swan, famous artist, become bosom friends, reconciled Mother and rehabilitated daughter! A passionately fabulous story of truth, joyfulness, much forgiveness and love...Retired Chaplain Fred W Hood

I can't seem to move on...

I absolutely loved this book! I have never been a reader and my husband started reading just recently (both in our 30's) so I thought I'd join him in turning off the "tube" and trying my hand at a book, if I could only stay awake. I usually start yawning just at the sight of the first sentence. Not this time! I am hooked on reading after "The Dwelling Place"! During the time I was reading it I would find myself wondering in the back of my mind, what movie was I watching that I didn't finish for some reason? And then I'd realize it was this book that I'd been reading and not finished yet. It is so detailed with vivid descriptions that you feel as though you were watching it on a screen. Very emotional and enchanting, but yet real and raw and true and wonderful. I don't want to "over-rate" it as I don't have much yet to compare it to. I had never heard of it, I just liked the cover and what I read on the back and just bought it. I'm so sentimental about it now and I just started reading another book, by a different author because it looked almost exactly like the cover of The Dwelling Place. However, I'm admittedly only on page 38, but I just can't get over The Dwelling Place and this one is not capturing me at all. I guess I need to know if it would make sense for me to read "Swan House" AFTER I've read The Dwelling Place? I hope you all enjoy this book as much as I did. God bless (babble-babble Ü).

A good read

Ellie Bartholomew is a twenty-year-old with a lot of issues. As the youngest of three daughters, she feels she's an embarrassment to her family-not just because of her facial scars or deviant behavior, but because she never says the right thing and doesn't hold to the family's religious "babble." She avoids her family and finds comfort in nearly all lost causes like stray animals, the Atlanta Braves and emotionally-scarred neighbors. The Dwelling Place is her unraveling of her family history-an assignment from rehab. But it's a more mature telling of the story than the immature and rebellious Ellie we meet in chapter one. Her assignment is completed only after an intense summer dealing with her mother and caring for her during chemotherapy's awful aftermath. Ellie has spent the last several years of her life despising her parents for what they let happen to her as a child. Her bitterness and feelings of betrayal have caused her to build additional walls with her parents and sisters. And her assumptions of their "perfect"" lives make her feel like even more of an outcast-because the hell she's been through has left her anything but perfect. Musser does an incredible job of involving the reader. The writing is conversational-where you feel a part of the story naturally. The unfolding of the story is seamless; Musser grabs the reader from the second sentence of the prologue when she hints at scandal. Ellie is a narrator one can relate to-the emotions felt of betrayal, unhappiness, and insecurity. The conflict between perception versus reality and the unveiling of truth is so well done in this novel. The characterizations make you care and cry and the research makes the book that much more fascinating and personal. I was really impressed with The Dwelling Place and plan on reading Musser's first book, The Swan House.

WOW!

You have to read Swan House first. It's an excellent book. It's a big story extremely well-told. I didn't know until I started reading this book, The Dwelling Place, that it is a sequel to Swan House. And I liked it so much I read it clean through twice in one week! It is a complicated story, exquisitely told. You can have the best story line in the world; and the most engaging characters in the world; but if you can't tell the story, if the story doesn't flow as effortlessly as a mighty river, it won't matter. This one does. It brought me to tears over and over and over again. I don't believe in customer reviews telling what the story is about. The publishers and editors have done that. I think readers should shine light on their personal response to what they've read. I am an absolutely voracious reader and have only in the last 6 months begun to read Christian fiction. I had no idea there was so much, or that I'd find the quality that I've found. This one is in my top ten. I noticed that Swan House was published, I believe in 2003? And this book was published in 2005? Good grief, Charlie Brown, does that mean I've got to wait a hole 'nother TWO YEARS before I get to read another Elizabeth Musser story? Oh dear.