Lulu Marketplace

Grandmother Elsie by Martha Finley is one of the Elsie books published in a series. Martha Finley has published twenty eight Elsie books in all. Grandmother Elsie is the eighth book in the Elsie Dinsmore series and one of the best. Pure soap opera, but surprisingly well-written. It deals mostly with the romantic lives of Elsie's three oldest children: namesake Elsie, Edward and Violet. The melodrama begins when namesake Elsie hears of her lover's illness and rushes overseas to Rome, to nurse him. After that Edward marries a fifteen-year-old orphaned girl, quite unexpectedly and under tragic circumstances. And then Violet marries Captain Raymond, a middle-aged widower with children. Author Martha Finley takes the series in a whole different direction by introducing an interesting new character: Violet's stepdaughter, nine-year-old Lulu.