MERCURY

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.