Elsie's Endless Wait

I just have to start by saying that I love this book, and all of the other A Life of Faith books. I can't believe that I haven't posted on them before. I like these books because they present a clear Christian message. Elsie's Endless Wait is the first in a series of eight books. It is followed by: Elsie's Impossible Choice, Elsie's New Life, Elsie's Stolen Heart, Elsie's True Love, Elsie's Troubled Times, Elsie's Tender Mercies. and Elsie's' Great Hope.

The Story Behind the A Life of Faith: Elsie Dinsmore Series

In 1868 a woman named Martha Finley wrote a novel called Elsie Dinsmore. It did very well. She continued to write novels about Elsie until 1905, writing a total of 28 books. Martha Finley died in 1909. In 1999, Mission City Press decided to redo the Elsie Dinsmore novels. They were rewritten in more modern English and each book was given a foreword about the time period, or a topic discussed in the book. You might be wondering how Mission City Press made 28 novels into only 8. Actually, there is also the A Life of Faith: Violet Travilla series, which finishes the original Elsie series. This is due to the fact that many of the later original Elsie books center around Elsie's daughter Violet and not Elsie herself.

Summary of Elsie's Endless Wait

When little Elsie Dinsmore was only four she was sent from her home near New Orleans to live with her grandfather and his family on the plantation of Roselands. The book takes place four years later. Her mother is dead and her father has been in Europe from the time Elsie was born on, so he has never seen his daughter. The year is sometime in the early 1840's. Although it seems as though Elsie has a perfectly good home, and she should be totally happy, she isn't. Her father has six younger half brothers and sisters, who are a great trial to Elsie, the fourth child Arthur especially. He is constantly doing things to annoy Elsie, and make her be on bad terms with his horrible mother or their nasty schoolteacher, Miss Day. There is also Enna, the youngest of the six children, and her mother's spoiled pet.

Then suddenly, Elsie's father makes a sudden return from Europe. Elsie does everything she can to please him. Sometimes though, Elsie thinks that her father is trying to make her do something that she believes to be going against God. She wants desperately to obey her father, Horace, but she wants to obey God more. It all comes down to one Sunday when Horace demands that Elsie play the piano at a party. Elsie believes that the only things that should be played on Sunday are Christian songs. and the song her father wants her to play isn't one. When Elsie refuses to do as her father says, he tells her that she will sit at the piano until she will play the song. Elsie ends up fainting, and it results in a large gash above her eye that is potentially life threatening. Elsie recovers, and her her father promises not to try to make her do things that she believes to be against her conscience. For now at least things seems to be turning out right.

Elsie's Endless wait was published in 1999 by Mission City Press.

Check out their website here.

To see a list of all of Martha Finley's original Elsie books, click here.