The Dwelling Place (The Swan House Series #2) [Paperback]

Elizabeth Musser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2005

Ellie, twenty-year-old daughter of Mary Swan and Robbie Bartholomew, knows all about dashed dreams and waiting. Because of a childhood accident that left her disfigured, Ellie has never been able to embrace the God of her parents. Though Ellie doesn't understand the significance of the place, nor the mystery that seems to surround it, she agrees to travel with her mother to a site in Scotland known as the Dwelling Place. But when illness strikes, Ellie instead reluctantly moves back home to care for her mother. As she and her mother struggle to reconnect, Ellie begins to wonder why Mary Swan wanted to go to the Dwelling Place. Is there a dwelling place for Ellie as well? And does she have to travel halfway around the world to find it? From the author of the acclaimed The Swan House.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this enjoyable, somewhat complicated sequel to The Swan House, Musser continues the tragedy-scarred story of artist Mary Swan Middleton through the first-person narrative of her troubled daughter, Ellie. Ellie grows up full of rage toward her mother, whom she holds responsible for a childhood accident that left her disfigured. Her rebellion causes her to battle various addictions, and the story opens with the fresh-out-of-rehab, overweight and unhappy Ellie conflicted about her family and her future. Mary Swan has recently undergone a double mastectomy, and her illness affords opportunities for her and Ellie to work on their relationship. Ellie begins rethinking the way she sees herself, her family and God. In a lovely piece of wisdom, Ellie muses, "Sometimes the breaking of things is cruel, and sometimes it is necessary, and sometimes it is just an accident." This is the novel's central message, and the faith themes that frame the story ensure that most of the "broken pieces" mend through redemption. Although Musser handles many symbolic moments well, she sometimes overexplains when subtlety might have been more welcome. Readers will need to work hard to keep track of the many characters, especially given the number of flashbacks and backstory narratives. However, Musser's solid prose, careful historical details and themes of hope and forgiveness make this an attractive choice for faith fiction readers.
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Review

"Ellie's faith journey is realistic and heartwarming... The Dwelling Place is true-to-life and should appeal to readers." -- Bookloons

"Musser displays a gift for complex characterization and intricate plotting that reveals flaws as well as beauties in human nature." -- RT Bookclub

"Musser displays a rare gift for complex characterization and intricate plotting that starkly reveals flaws & beauties in human nature." -- Romantic Times, April 2005

"The characterizations make you care and cry, and the research makes the book that much more fascinating and personal." -- Armchair Interviews

"This is one book that you cannot put down." -- The Romance Readers Connection

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers (April 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764229265
• ISBN-13: 978-0764229268
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #608,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW!, April 18, 2005

By 

Trisha E. Lisk (Hemet, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dwelling Place (The Swan House Series #2) (Paperback)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great whether or not you've read Swan House, September 11, 2005

By 

R. Grant (Macon, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dwelling Place (The Swan House Series #2) (Paperback)

The Dwelling Place is a terrific read, whether or not you've read The Swan House. It's a great stand-alone story of a young woman (Ellie) who doesn't seem to fit into her "perfect" family, and her journey to get to know them, and herself. If you have read The Swan House, however, it's intriguing to see those returning characters from a different angle-from Ellie's point of view. There is a gap of several decades between the two stories, and there are a number of mysteries as to how events unfolded in that time period. Why do Carl Matthews and Mary Swan (and their respective spouses) now have such a strained relationship? How did Ellie's face get disfigured, and was it truly Mary Swan's fault, as Ellie believes? What happened on Rachel and Mary Swan's trip to Europe as young women that shaped their lives forever? As Ellie digs for the answers to these questions, you are caught up in the events of Ellie's life in the present, and of the story of the Bartholomew family from the tumultuous sixties to the current day.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good read, July 22, 2005

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dwelling Place (The Swan House Series #2) (Paperback)

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.