At a moment when both libraries and museums are under serious threat of losing federal funding, the publication of Seattle author Elise Hooper’s latest novel – while strictly coincidental – provides insights into how institutions that serve as cultural repositories showcase and reflect upon stories from our past.

And just because those stories may not always be palatable for everyone to accept, does that mean they should be censored?

   “The Library of Lost Dollhouses” is the story of two women in two different centuries. 

   In 2024, Tildy Barrows is the curator of a house museum and archival library that is located in a Bay Area Beaux-Arts mansion. As is true for many house museums, the upkeep of an historic property, shifting economic priorities post-pandemic, and changing demographics can make it challenging to keep the doors open.

   But then Tildy discovers two ornate dollhouses that had been sealed off in a hidden storage area. Wondering why anyone would have wanted to hide these beautifully detailed miniatures, she begins to research the houses and learns more about who commissioned their construction and the artist who built them.

   This novel entwines Tildy’s story with another story from a century before — of the dollhouses’ creator, Cora, and her European patrons and friends. 

   When Cora was just a teenager, she had left the United States to try to make her way as an artist in Paris during the Belle Epoque era. This is where she receives her first commission: to create a dollhouse-sized replica of a Parisian home. 

   But when World War I breaks out, Cora flees to England. 

   Within a short time, she finds herself working at an estate in the English countryside that has been converted into a hospital for wounded soldiers. The men who recover from their physical injuries have a chance to continue their rehabilitation in her workshop, creating miniature furniture and accessories for a new elaborate dollhouse commission Cora has received.

   A century later, back in the U.S., Tildy is struggling to keep her historical organization from going bankrupt. She knows that the discovery of Cora’s dollhouses has the potential to raise more interest in the archives.

   But as the curator does additional research on the dollhouses, she realizes that each of the structures is embedded with very personal secrets of covert operations, and forbidden loves. In essence, the women who commissioned these dollhouses were living lives that were more capacious and daring than society at that time would have accepted, so even as they were “shrinking” their lives to be memorialized in quaint miniature form, they also tucked in clues about the secrets they had to suppress. 

   As one of Cora’s patrons concedes, “Women vanish far too easily. … But eventually those secrets can be revealed.”

   In 2024, it’s up to Tildy to determine if the time is right for those revelations. 

   In Spring 2025, readers of “The Library of Lost Dollhouses” will recognize that for many people it’s even riskier now to assert one’s true identity — how disconcerting!

The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com

 

 

“The Library of Lost Dollhouses” by Elise Hooper

William Morrow — 320 pp — $30