At the turn of the century, Ellen Rimbauer, the
young bride of Seattle industrialist John
Rimbauer, began keeping a remarkable diary. This
diary became the secret place where Ellen could
confess her anxieties about her new marriage,
express her confusion over her emerging
sexuality and contemplate the nightmare that her
life was becoming. The diary not only follows
the development of a girl into womanhood, it
follows the construction of the Rimbauer
mansion--called Rose Red--an enormous home that
would be the site of so many horrific and
inexplicable tragedies in the years ahead. The
Diary of Ellen Rimbauer is a rare document, one
that gives us an unusual view of daily life
among the aristocracy in the early 1900s, a
window into one woman's hidden emotional
torment, and a record of the mysterious events
at Rose Red that scandalized the society at the
time. Edited by Joyce Reardon, Ph.D., as part of
her research, the diary was published as
preparations were being made by Dr. Reardon to
enter Rose Red and fully investigate its
disturbing history.
