What do you think?
Rate this book
Emelie
The adulterous love affair of a distant ancestor of Emelie endangers the future of her own love
492 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 12, 1982
About the author
Melissa Mather
14 books1 followerMelissa Mather Ambros, was an author and documented her families' story of moving to rural Vermont, in her gripping memoir called the “Rough Road Home”. They became homesteaders and raised cows for milk, cultivated beautiful gardens and grew some infamous potatoes! Excerpts from her book were featured in a series of Saturday Evening Post articles in 1958.
She was born Nov. 12, 1917, in Chicago, to Arlisle Mather Brown, an English teacher, and Alfred Bruce Brown, an electrical engineer. She launched an exceptional academic career in Montclair, N.J., where she and her sister, Mary, and brothers Bruce and Ted enjoyed an idyllic childhood. She graduated from high school at 15 and pursued a degree in English literature at Oberlin College, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1939. The following three months she toured England by bicycle, a solo trip that launched her lifelong passion for making and for touring beautiful gardens.
Returning to the U.S., she entered Tob-Coburn Fashion School in New York City on a full scholarship, and a year later, she took a job as a stylist in a department store in Baltimore. She met her first husband, Lt. Robert Lee Coughlin, at a dance at Fort Meade.
She was born Nov. 12, 1917, in Chicago, to Arlisle Mather Brown, an English teacher, and Alfred Bruce Brown, an electrical engineer. She launched an exceptional academic career in Montclair, N.J., where she and her sister, Mary, and brothers Bruce and Ted enjoyed an idyllic childhood. She graduated from high school at 15 and pursued a degree in English literature at Oberlin College, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1939. The following three months she toured England by bicycle, a solo trip that launched her lifelong passion for making and for touring beautiful gardens.
Returning to the U.S., she entered Tob-Coburn Fashion School in New York City on a full scholarship, and a year later, she took a job as a stylist in a department store in Baltimore. She met her first husband, Lt. Robert Lee Coughlin, at a dance at Fort Meade.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 14, 2018
Tamarack..a hundred and fifty years ago, ruled by Israel Carsona cold, cruel, man.
He builds his great stone estate in the Vermont hills,and brings his new bride Emelie there to be his wife and mother to his child.
Only to keep her confined to his cruel and strict rules, and to her sitting room to be a possession, to fulfil her "duty" and nothing more.
When his jealousy is aroused, he savagely destroys any happiness Emelie and her secret love may have.
Now a hundred and fifty years into the future, we are introduced to Emelie Carson Milne, who has suffered already much loss in her life.
She is summoned to her Great aunt's side who wishes to see Tamarack one more time before she dies,threw Emelie's eyes.
Now inheriting the family estate, Emelie also finds love.
Will secrets and tragic passion from the past threaten to destroy her future?
This is the story of two women, past and present, of their losses, loves, and their courage to remain strong no matter what life has dished out to them.
To hope, to dream, to be loved.
If a reader is not use to the past/present Heroine theme or told in the first person's voice as well, it might be confusing at first.
I personally love this type of book if its done properly, and what a great job this author did with it! She not only skilfully brought me forward and back to each "Emelie" but made their story uniquely different, but also with the same "plight" theme without making the two women confusing as well. The author tells Emelie of the past threw her journals that she writes, and Emelie of the present very much in the "present time."
If you love this type of theme, with dark Gothic romantic suspense, secret's galore, mad passion, character's you would like to throttle, and characters you can applaud for their courage, then this is a great book for you to read!
I could give more detail of "what happens" but that would spoil it for those who have it on their "to read" list.
Some of my updates may give some hints as I got further into the book I didn't give any as it would have given away to many secrets, you'll just have to read this great book yourself!..it did have the touch of "Marilyn Harris" and Barabra Erskine" for me.
Highly recommend for Gothic romance lovers..and great "keeper".
He builds his great stone estate in the Vermont hills,and brings his new bride Emelie there to be his wife and mother to his child.
Only to keep her confined to his cruel and strict rules, and to her sitting room to be a possession, to fulfil her "duty" and nothing more.
When his jealousy is aroused, he savagely destroys any happiness Emelie and her secret love may have.
Now a hundred and fifty years into the future, we are introduced to Emelie Carson Milne, who has suffered already much loss in her life.
She is summoned to her Great aunt's side who wishes to see Tamarack one more time before she dies,threw Emelie's eyes.
Now inheriting the family estate, Emelie also finds love.
Will secrets and tragic passion from the past threaten to destroy her future?
This is the story of two women, past and present, of their losses, loves, and their courage to remain strong no matter what life has dished out to them.
To hope, to dream, to be loved.
If a reader is not use to the past/present Heroine theme or told in the first person's voice as well, it might be confusing at first.
I personally love this type of book if its done properly, and what a great job this author did with it! She not only skilfully brought me forward and back to each "Emelie" but made their story uniquely different, but also with the same "plight" theme without making the two women confusing as well. The author tells Emelie of the past threw her journals that she writes, and Emelie of the present very much in the "present time."
If you love this type of theme, with dark Gothic romantic suspense, secret's galore, mad passion, character's you would like to throttle, and characters you can applaud for their courage, then this is a great book for you to read!
I could give more detail of "what happens" but that would spoil it for those who have it on their "to read" list.
Some of my updates may give some hints as I got further into the book I didn't give any as it would have given away to many secrets, you'll just have to read this great book yourself!..it did have the touch of "Marilyn Harris" and Barabra Erskine" for me.
Highly recommend for Gothic romance lovers..and great "keeper".
August 15, 2019
You know those books that you're only tolerating & not enjoying, but you keep reading because you know that if you set it down to take a shower (or make some tea, or eat a cookie, or look at the night sky, or check the daily scoreboard on MLB.com) that you'll never pick it up again, & technically you wouldn't be sorry about leaving it behind, but you feel like you've read too far & tortured yourself too much to not reward your intestinal fortitude?
...This is one of those.
I tend to dislike timeslip/dual-timeline as a rule, but since I enjoyed GREEN DARKNESS I thought maybe another 70s-era novel would work. Perhaps it was only the modern authors who recycle whiny, judgmental, neurotic young divorcees & widows... perhaps the 'contemporary' sections wouldn't bore me to tears with tedious descriptions of restoring a neglected family home that offers the occasional tease of being haunted... perhaps I wouldn't spend the whole book wishing it was focused on the 'past' voice/diary, because those brief parts were much more interesting or sinister than the divorcee & her obnoxious neuroses.
Nope. It reads almost exactly the same as newer books of this ilk (though the hero did gently slap the heroine for hysterics, which probably wouldn't be kosher after the 80s**). If you like Erskine, Kearsley, or any of that endless parade of past-present bookclub fic where a modern woman's life eerily parallels the travails of her ancestor from 200 years ago, this would undoubtedly be to your taste.
As for me, I felt like Past Emelie -- locked in a barred-up room, staring out the window & waiting for the agony to end.
2.5 stars, rounded up because of the good writing.
**Poor Justin doesn't deserve to be saddled with Present Emelie. How a man could fall for that walking dumpster fire is beyond me -- only in romantic fiction, I suppose.
...This is one of those.
I tend to dislike timeslip/dual-timeline as a rule, but since I enjoyed GREEN DARKNESS I thought maybe another 70s-era novel would work. Perhaps it was only the modern authors who recycle whiny, judgmental, neurotic young divorcees & widows... perhaps the 'contemporary' sections wouldn't bore me to tears with tedious descriptions of restoring a neglected family home that offers the occasional tease of being haunted... perhaps I wouldn't spend the whole book wishing it was focused on the 'past' voice/diary, because those brief parts were much more interesting or sinister than the divorcee & her obnoxious neuroses.
Nope. It reads almost exactly the same as newer books of this ilk (though the hero did gently slap the heroine for hysterics, which probably wouldn't be kosher after the 80s**). If you like Erskine, Kearsley, or any of that endless parade of past-present bookclub fic where a modern woman's life eerily parallels the travails of her ancestor from 200 years ago, this would undoubtedly be to your taste.
As for me, I felt like Past Emelie -- locked in a barred-up room, staring out the window & waiting for the agony to end.
2.5 stars, rounded up because of the good writing.
**Poor Justin doesn't deserve to be saddled with Present Emelie. How a man could fall for that walking dumpster fire is beyond me -- only in romantic fiction, I suppose.
December 20, 2018
Almost got a 5 star but had continuation issue in last chapter. Author is a good writer.
February 20, 2019
Loved it! :):)
October 23, 2025
One of those books that would have been really good if it had been about 200 pages less and not bogged down with a LOT of unnecessary stuff that was just plain BORING! Everything that was said in 500 pages could just as easily have been said in 300. (I think the author suffered from "writer's diarrhea".) I skipped over the redundant parts, and the rest made for a good story, but because I had to do all that skipping, I took away a star.
Also, the endless relatives, past and present, who married and divorced, who cheated on who with whom, who committed semi-incest, etc. got to be a bit much. So, I took away another star.
Also, the endless relatives, past and present, who married and divorced, who cheated on who with whom, who committed semi-incest, etc. got to be a bit much. So, I took away another star.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews