by Ellen Baker
"A family secret, a DNA test, a journey as rich and colorful as the early-day circus itself. Through Cecily Larson's hidden life, Ellen Baker tenderly examines personal determination, lost love, family ties, and our innate need to discover our own truth." — Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours and Before and After
Orphan Train meets Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in this compelling multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make.
In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson's mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she's made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the "little sister" to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she's found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected—and dangerous—course.
In 2015, Cecily is now 94 and living a quiet life in Minnesota, with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson. But when her family decides to surprise her with an at-home DNA test, the unexpected results not only bring to light the tragic love story that Cecily has kept hidden for decades but also throw into question everything about the family she's raised and claimed as her own for nearly seventy years. Cecily and everyone in her life must now decide who they really are and what family—and forgiveness—really mean.
Sweeping through a long period of contemporary history, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson is an immersive, compelling, and entertaining family drama centered around one remarkable woman and her determination to survive.
"A family secret, a DNA test, a journey as rich and colorful as the early-day circus itself. Through Cecily Larson's hidden life, Ellen Baker tenderly examines personal determination, lost love, family ties, and our innate need to discover our own truth." — Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours and Before and After
Orphan Train meets Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in this compelling multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make.
In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson's mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she's made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the "little sister" to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she's found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected—and dangerous—course.
In 2015, Cecily is now 94 and living a quiet life in Minnesota, with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson. But when her family decides to surprise her with an at-home DNA test, the unexpected results not only bring to light the tragic love story that Cecily has kept hidden for decades but also throw into question everything about the family she's raised and claimed as her own for nearly seventy years. Cecily and everyone in her life must now decide who they really are and what family—and forgiveness—really mean.
Sweeping through a long period of contemporary history, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson is an immersive, compelling, and entertaining family drama centered around one remarkable woman and her determination to survive.
Reviews-
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December 18, 2023
The uneven latest from Baker (Keeping the House) poses questions about adoption and family heritage. In a small town in Minnesota in 2015, Cecily Larson, 94, breaks her hip and, confined to a hospital bed, realizes time may be running out to share the secret she’s kept for her entire life, which stems from her childhood. At age seven, Cecily was taken from a Chicago orphanage to be trained as a bareback rider in a traveling circus. Baker makes clear that the secret, which is revealed to the reader later on, will impact Cecily’s widowed daughter Liz, her divorced granddaughter Molly, and her teenage grandson Caden, who has just started a research project on his family’s DNA. At the same time in Florida and North Carolina, members of another branch of the Larson family are wondering about their own mysterious family history and start taking DNA tests. Cecily’s circus life provides plenty of colorful drama, but subplots involving Molly’s lingering ambivalence about her divorce years earlier and Liz’s cancer diagnosis are tied up too quickly in the rushed final act, and the conclusion is too convenient to be convincing. There’s too much clutter in this family saga. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary. -
February 1, 2024
Fiercely independent, 94-year-old Cecily Larson refuses to leave her rambling old Victorian, but a fall on the stairs sends her to the hospital. While gathering some of Cecily's belongings, her daughter, Liz, discovers an old, faded photograph hidden in a dresser drawer, providing a clue to Cecily's past, which she hid from her family for more than 70 years. After she was abandoned at an orphanage, Cecily was adopted by the owner of a circus and trained as a bareback rider--a glamorous occupation that daring Cecily grows to love. But a forbidden relationship with Lucky, a young Black man who works as a roustabout for the circus, changes everything. Baker (I Gave My Heart to Know This, 2011) deftly weaves the lives of three generations of Larson women into a moving tale of secrets, identity, and found family. The story of Cecily's past unravels throughout the book, taking several unexpected turns, and Baker's vivid descriptions bring both the historical and contemporary plotlines to life. An engaging family saga, perfect for fans of Susan Meissner and Lisa Wingate.COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from January 15, 2024
Something old meets something new in a melodrama with DNA testing as its deus ex machina. Baker's latest begins in an orphanage in 1924 Chicago and hopscotches its way around the country and through the years to a climactic scene set in that city almost a century later. Though Cecily Larson's mother tells her she'll be back within a year when she drops the little girl off at the institution in the opening scene, three years later Cecily has turned 7 and no mama has appeared. So--the orphanage sells her to the circus! Where she will be trained as an acrobatic bareback rider! Meanwhile, in an alternating series of chapters set in 2015, Cecily is a woman in her 90s living in a small town in northern Minnesota. She has a daughter named Liz, who has a daughter named Molly, who has a son named Caden (definitely a little hard to keep straight)--and Caden wants to do his honors biology project on DNA testing. Ruh-roh, thinks the alert reader, seeing something coming in the distance, which becomes even more discernible when new chapters begin to follow a second mother-daughter group on the East Coast. After a while, you feel just like the people in the book: When the heck are those DNA results going to arrive? While it's a little trying to wait so long for the fuse to blow on all the secrets and lies and underhanded dealings, it turns out we don't know the half of it. As a rule, an amazing DNA-reveal story needs to be true to be really interesting...but if you're going to make one up, this one's a doozy. Baker's re-creation of circus life, tuberculosis-sanitarium life, and home-for-wayward-girls life in the 1920s and '30s is well researched and punchy, while the 21st-century Minnesota storyline is perhaps a little droopier. But those test results are coming, and so is the big shebang.. The literary equivalent of a Minnesota hot dish: decent, tasty comfort food.COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
