Book Tour & Review:

Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth
by Ross Eliot
Heliocentric Press

From the book's website:

This narrative begins in 1998 when, during his early twenties, Ross Eliot relocated to Portland, Oregon and eventually moved into the pantry of a grand house owned by Dr. Babette Ellsworth, an arcane history professor.

Her strange life unfolded in stories, about the 1928 central Washington kidnapping carried out by a mysterious French woman, life in occupied Europe during World War II, the assassin of Rasputin who was a family friend, East Indian soldiers who fought for Nazi Germany and trips to the compound of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose cult perpetrated a 1984 bio-terror attack in Oregon.

Between international travels with Dr. Ellsworth, Eliot encountered many unusual people within Portland’s diverse subcultures. These relationships led to dance parties at historical monuments, Scrabble games with a nocturnal jazzpunk and perilous adventures involving a beautiful sex scam artist. Eliot cared for his professor through her tragic final death in 2002, yet the layers of Babette’s story were only partially revealed. Unable to stop exploring her story, he afterward delved deeper into Dr. Ellsworth’s complicated lives, exposing murkier secrets than ever suspected. From gender and sexuality to religious theory and existential philosophy, it’s an unorthodox love saga between pupil and mentor, yet also an ode for the city of Portland where they live.

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Truth is stranger than fiction.

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  If you like your reading to be full of unexpected characters, interesting plot twists, and sparse prose, then you need to grab a copy of Babette now!

  Hopefully, you’ve read the description above.  I can’t put it more precisely than that enlightening synopsis.  Hollywood could have lots of fun trying to put this story on the big screen but they’d have to throw in fictional scenes to make the story more “believable.”  Think about that for a moment.

“Babette” is the star of this book but the author/student/caretaker is a worthy chronicler of this strange and gripping tale.  I don’t like to read “digitally.”  I prefer my reading to be the physical book variation, but I lit up the dark reading room with the light of my computer screen for several nights gathering in the details of this unique story.