Elsie Dinsmore

Written by Martha Finley

Narrated by Anna Fields

Elsie Dinsmore is an endearing eight-year-old girl who is very unhappy living at her Uncle’s Southern plantation. As Elsie learns to handle her problems, she begins to learn more about herself and to depend on her faith in her heavenly Father for the peace and happiness she seeks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Jan 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9780786120178

Reviews for Elsie Dinsmore

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have occasionally struggled to finish some of Bill Bryson's previous books. They are always very informative and well-written, clearly thoroughly researched, and often quite amusing. I have, however, generally encountered some indefinable difficulty with them, and found my enthusiasm tapering as I draw towards the close: the nearer I come to the finish, the more of a burden they become. It sometimes seems as though I am caught in a Zeno's arrow scenario in which before I can finish the book I will have to read half of what remains, and then half of what will b left after that, and then and then a further half of that reducing balance …What is oddest of all about this is that I don't know why It was the same, though admittedly to a lesser degree, with this book, though I did enjoy the first half. I raced through the early sections, lapping up the customary melange of obscure facts that Bryson offers up in great abundance. I did, however, reach a tipping point about three quarters of the way through, and from then on it became a struggle to plod on through to the end. I often feel find myself disappointed when thinking that I still have quite a lot of a book left to find that the publisher has included a few chapters of the next book by way of an appetiser. On this occasion the fact that there was a comprehensive bibliography that took up about forty pages came as a great relief - it felt like being let off school on a half holiday.The central idea of the book is very well thought out. Rather than just setting out a straightforward account of Lindbergh's epochal flight from New York to Paris (which would have been gripping enough, after all), Bryson sets it within the context of what was happening in New York in 1927. He also throws in potted biographies of Lindbergh, Babe Ruth and Presidents Hoover and Coolidge along with histories of Prohibition, the Federal Reserve and American aviation (the latter being conspicuous by its paucity compared to flying achievements in Europe prior to Lindbergh's triumph). This probably makes it all sound very interesting, which it certainly was, but somehow it still jarred slightly. Still, I now know a lot more than I did before.