Scent Keeper

Product Information

I apologize this review is pretty vague but I do believe this is a story that is best enjoyed the less you know ahead of time. You just have to trust me when I say it is a journey worth taking. For quite awhile near the beginning of the book, I still had doubts but soon everything started to fall into place and I was hooked. The way scents and the sense of smell was weaved into the story was just brilliant. I ended up finishing the book in just one night which goes to show how much I liked it. My father had begun building them when we moved into the cabin, and when he was done they lined our walls from floor to ceiling. The drawers were small things, their polished wooden fronts no bigger than my child-sized hands. They surrounded us like the forest and islands outside our door. If determination, courage, thoughtfulness, loyalty, and compassion are traits that you admire in characters, then you might love Emmeline. Reminiscent of the main character in stories such as Where the Crawdads Sing, The Great Alone, The Glass Castle, or Educated, Emmeline is resilient, relentless, and fearless as she grapples with the truth of her father’s actions and reconciles his love for her with his choices to protect her. Throughout the story, I cared for Emmeline and what happened to her. In addition, the ending felt like a jumble of information rather than any sort of resolution, and the conclusion was oddly placed.

Erica Bauermeister has crafted a unique and lovely tail about secrets, forgiveness, and the power of scent. Emmeline spent the first 12 years of her life living on an isolated island with her beloved father. All they had was each other, the trees, their cabin, and a drawers of fragrance. As Emmeline gets older she knows there is more behind her father’s obsession with cent then he is telling her, but what is it? After a tragedy Emmeline finds herself thrust into the “real world“. For Emmeline the outside world is terribly challenging . If it weren’t for the loving couple that takes her in and a boy named Fisher she would be all alone. But as time goes on Emmeline knows it is time for her to confront the secrets of her past.Emmeline has been raised by her father on a remote island, secluded from the rest of society. To say he is obsessed with scents is putting it mildly. He has a machine that creates different scents and he has stored a whole bunch of them in their house. The older Emmeline gets, the more she has this feeling that something else is out there although given her upbringing she is absolutely unprepared when certain events thrust her into the real world. Emmeline experiences the deaths of Cleo, her father, and Dodge. How does her reaction to each differ? What does each one tell us about her? Each drawer contained a single small bottle, and inside each bottle was a piece of paper, rolled around itself like a secret. The glass stoppers of the bottles were sealed with different colored waxes—red in the top rows, green for those below. My father almost never opened the bottles. During the winter things get tough as food becomes more scarce, but she loves when her father tells her fairy tales and stories. In their cabin they are surrounded by little glass bottles which contain papers that have mysterious scents on them. Her father doesn't explain where they come from, or what the machine that creates these scent papers is, but he gives her powerful advice: "People lie, Emmeline, but smells never do." A book about senses, about scents, and how they can transport us places, bringing up memories, and reminding us of important events in our lives. Have you ever heard the question, "If you could give up one of your senses which would you give up?" Many may choose the ability to smell. Many would choose differently after reading this book.

What do you think about Emmeline’s decision to take Fisher to the island? How does it compare to her father’s decision to take her there as a baby? Bauermeister's heroine Emmeline might also be kin to Jane Eyre. Heartbreaking, thrilling, and wonderfully instructive, this sensual novel is pure pleasure reading."— Adrianne Harun, bestselling author of A Man Came Out of A Door in the Mountain Scents have the power to evoke memories and powerful emotions. Certain smells can transport me to special moments in time and place. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could bottle them and save them forever? Emmaline and her father live on a remote island where they are immersed in nature, and they did just that. This is definitely a book that made me think about the connection between scent and memory, and how when I remember certain events or people in my life, I often associate a particular smell with them. The Scent Keeper is thought-provoking and memorable.

November Book Selections

All those stories, all those lives, each one an entire world to the person living it, and yet I knew none of them. Maybe that’s how it always is, I thought–we all just go along, catching glimpses of one another, thinking we know everything.” You like it," Claudia said. For the first time, she seemed pleased with me. "Do you know what that is, that note you're searching for?" Bauermeister’s heroine Emmeline might also be kin to Jane Eyre. Heartbreaking, thrilling, and wonderfully instructive, this sensual novel is pure pleasure reading.” — Adrianne Harun, bestselling author of A Man Came Out of A Door in the Mountain

A] magical novel…Blending fantasy with a realist family drama, Bauermeister’s novel will enchant fans of Katherine Paterson.”– Publishers Weekly

More from The Author

Erica Bauermeister is a master storyteller, an expert wordsmith, and an agile weaver of creative and fanciful tales that transport the mind as well as painfully massage the coronary muscle. I ran the gamut while reading, I was transfixed, intrigued, appalled, frustrated, enraged, despondent, deeply moved, entertained, impatient, brokenhearted, and nearly insane with curiosity; yet through it all, I was also 100% engaged and fully immersed in the tale. Our cabin had been built by the truest of runaways. He set up in a place where no one could find him and built his home from trees he felled himself. He spent forty years on the island, clearing space for a garden and planting an orchard. One autumn, however, he simply disappeared. Drowned, it was said. After that the cabin was empty for years until we arrived and found the apple trees, opened the door. Raised the population of the island to two. This was a fascinating read for me, one in which I enjoyed every minute reading it and quite honestly, didn’t want it to end. I actually have never read a book quite like this one – unique in its detailed exploration of scent through the character of Emmeline and the talent she possessed, done in a way that was fascinating and engaging, yet also incorporating the familiarity of a story about family, love, relationships (with people as well as with nature), and the realities of ordinary life (whether good, bad, or everything in between). I love books that teach me things, that make me wonder, reflect, and ponder, that give me food for thought, and most of all, that make me continue to think about the story or its characters long after I finish reading – this book definitely did all that and then some! To be honest, before reading this book, I never gave much thought to our sense of smell or the types of images that certain scents and fragrances can conjure up – it was another one of those things I took for granted as being a necessary part of life but not tremendously special. This book changed my perspective in a big way, as it helped me realize how scents can be used to evoke memories (both pleasant and unpleasant), but can also be used to steer human behavior and even manipulate people into acting in certain ways. Already, it has made me more aware in the sense that when I smell certain scents now, I wonder about the people and the story behind those scents… I inhaled, and Victoria's kitchen disappeared around me. It was early morning in the cabin, winter; I could smell the woodstove working to keep the frost at bay. My father had fed the sourdough starter, and the tang of it played off the warm scent of coffee grounds. I could smell my own warmth in the air, rising from the blankets I'd tossed aside. At one point in the book, Fisher’s mother says: “Martin used to tell me how salmon always return to the same stream to spawn. They say it’s the smell that draws them upstream. Maybe we’re more like fish than we think.” How does this apply to the characters in the book? Do you agree with the statement?