Mercury

August 1, 2023

In Burns's Mercury, following the acclaimed Shiner, teenage Marley West meets the Joseph brothers when she blows into a Pennsylvania river valley town and soon marries one while tending to them all; the discovery of a dead body in the church's attic makes her wonder whether she should watch out for herself first (40,000-copy first printing). Prepub Alert.

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October 23, 2023
An aimless young woman joins a family of roofers in 1990 Pennsylvania in Burns’s appealing if florid sophomore novel (after Shiner). In the summer before Marley’s last year of high school, she catches the eyes of the handsome Joseph brothers, who invite her to dinner. She becomes a regular guest at their rambling Victorian home, where Elise Joseph serves a home-cooked meal nightly to her erratic husband, Mick, and three sons, Baylor, Waylon, and Baby Shay. Eventually, Marley gets pregnant and marries Waylon. In a bid to save enough money to get their own place, she tries to help Waylon bring in more jobs for the family’s roofing company, only to discover their finances are in shambles. Burns hits a few wrong notes, such as injecting implausible lyricism into Waylon’s perspective (he imagines his father might “burn his whole life to the ground just by chasing his own imagination”). Still, she keeps up the tension with multiple plot twists involving secrets about the town and the Josephs, and she portrays Marley’s working-class struggles as a young mother with precision. Once again, Burns delivers a satisfying portrait of life on the margins. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, Gernert Co.

December 1, 2023
In the 1990s, a young woman yearns to become part of one big happy family, and thinks she might be. When teenager Marley West arrives in the Pennsylvania town of Mercury in 1990, she falls in love almost immediately. Not with Baylor Joseph, the swaggering athlete who swoops her up, but with Baylor's family--or at least what Marley thinks his family is. Baylor soon dumps her, and she falls into the arms of his younger brother, sweet, responsible Waylon. Soon Marley is pregnant and she and Waylon are married and living in a tiny apartment in the Josephs' sprawling Victorian house. The only child of a hard-working single mother, she's never experienced the clamor and warmth of a big family. She's charmed by the three sons (the youngest is tender-hearted Shay Baby), and impressed by patriarch Mick Joseph, a damaged Vietnam vet who runs the roofing company that supports the family and employs most of them. But Marley is most enthralled by Elise Joseph, wife and mother, who rules the household with never a hair out of place. Marley doesn't just want Elise to love her; she wants to be Elise. But Marley will discover deep fractures within the family and the extreme sacrifices Elise makes--not to mention a literal skeleton, not in the closet but in the attic of a local church. Marley forges her own identity, taking over the finances of the roofing company from the profligate Mick and raising her son, Theo, as her marriage wavers. Although by then it's the mid-1990s and rights for women and gay people are gaining cultural force, they don't seem to have any impact on small-town Pennsylvania, where Marley feels the same pressure of tradition Elise does, and another character suffers mightily. Though there's a large cast, Burns brings depth and insight to each member. Well-drawn, engaging characters and a vivid setting make this is a compelling study of family dynamics.

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December 1, 2023
In the small Rust Belt town of Mercury, PA, the ability to build your own future is prized. Mick and Elise Joseph built a roofing business and raised three sons in Mercury, each son as dissimilar from the others as he could be. Despite their own hopes and dreams, Baylor, Waylon, and Shay faithfully followed the path their father set out for them, and Joseph and Sons Roofing became a fixture in Mercury and beyond. When a young woman called Marley moves to town, she catches the eye of all three Joseph sons in ways that change the course not only of their business but of the entire family. In the vein of Stacey Swann's Olympus, Texas (2021), Daniel H. Turtel's The Family Morfawitz (2023), and Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist (2020), Burns' (Shiner, 2020) sweeping family saga highlights the power of secrets kept and revealed. With clear, luminous prose, able to plumb the complementary and contrasting depths of masculine and feminine energy, emotion, and ambition, Mercury is a delight.

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