THE DIARY OF ELLEN RIMBAUER; My Life at Rose Red

Reardon, Joyce, Ed

ISBN 10: 0786868015 / ISBN 13: 9780786868018

Published by Hyperion, NY, 2001

About this Item

First edition, first printing. With an afterword by Steven Rimbauer (great-grandson) dated Sept 2000. 252pp, editor's note. Illustrated and decorated cover, black letters, appears unread. End papers contain blueprint of Rose Red. Many historic photos and some drawings. Ellen Rimbauer was a prominent socialite in the Seattle area at the turn of the 20th century. From the back cover: This book "is a rare document, one that gives us an unusual view of daily life among the aristocracy in the early 1900s, a window into one woman's hidden emotional torment, and a record of the mysterious events at Rose Red that scandalized society at the time.". Seller Inventory # 3239

Bibliographic Details

Title: THE DIARY OF ELLEN RIMBAUER; My Life at Rose...

Publisher: Hyperion, NY

Publication Date: 2001

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Edition: First Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

At the turn of the twentieth century, Ellen Rimbauer became the young bride of Seattle industrialist John Rimbauer, and began keeping a remarkable diary. This diary became the secret place where Ellen could confess her fears of the new marriage, her confusion over her emerging sexuality, and the nightmare that her life would become. The diary not only follows the development of a girl into womanhood, it follows the construction of the Rimbauer mansioncalled Rose Redan enormous home that would be the site of so many horrific and inexplicable tragedies in the years ahead. The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red is a rare document, one that gives us an unusual view of daily life among the aristocracy in the early 1900s, a window into one womans hidden emotional torment, and a record of the mysterious events at Rose Red that scandalized Seattle society at the timeevents that can only be fully understood now that the diary has come to light. Edited by Joyce Reardon, Ph.D. as part of her research, the diary is being published as preparations are being made by Dr. Reardon to enter Rose Red and fully investigate its disturbing history.

Review:

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer--My Life at Rose Red, a spin-off from the Stephen King miniseries Rose Red, provides the interested reader with some terrifying back stories to Rose Red's tales of doomed psychics and Dr Joyce Reardon's expedition into the dark rooms of a house that is another of King's great Bad Places. At the beginning of the 20th century, magnate Rimbauer builds Rose Red as a present and prison for his young wife, a place in which she is to be displayed as a trophy and have her will broken. He does not know his woman--Ellen fights back with all the means at her disposal, which progressively come to include the attributes of the house he ill-advisedly built on a cursed site; people disappear in Rose Red, vanishing between one room and another, and are never seen again except as blood-smeared wraiths. They are especially likely to disappear if they are the women with whom Rimbauer humiliates his wife. This is a powerful story of a woman developing power and learning little from that responsibility except that she likes the infliction of pain and terror; we come to empathise enough with Ellen that her slow corruption is as terrifying as the nightmares that occasionally surface in her narrative. --Roz Kaveney