Book Review: Mercury | Amy Jo Burns

Amy Jo Burns’s Mercury is a compelling and emotional story about the conflicting loyalties in a small Pennsylvania town. Set in a blue collar town where secrets don’t stay buried forever, this novel is a story that is powerful in its quietness.

Mercury is a small, working town near Pittsburg. The Josephs family own a local roofing company. Mick is the father of three boys, expecting his sons to continue the roofing business. Elise is his wife and mother to their three children, beloved in Mercury and later going on to develop dementia.

It’s 1990 when Marley West and her mother arrive in Mercury, leaving behind their old town and a Blockbuster card with nine punches, almost ready to be redeemed. The two oldest Joseph brothers are about to begin their senior year of high school. It’s at a baseball game not long after Marley arrives that she sees Baylor and Waylon Joseph. Unbeknownst to everyone, their fates change forever that day that Marley hurries down the bleachers towards the two Joseph brothers.

“Being forgotten was sometimes safer than being seen.”

Marley falls in love with the Joseph’s family almost immediately. The daughter of a single mother who works long hours as a nurse, Marley yearns to be part of a happy family. She thinks being part of the Josephs may be what she wants most. Initially she is swooped up by Baylor Joseph, the muscular, strapping athlete of the family. But it isn’t long before Baylor dumps her, and she falls for the sweeter Joseph brother, Waylon. Waylon and Marley will go on to get pregnant and married, living in a tiny apartment at the top of the Josephs’ old Victorian house.

The story opens with a disturbing discovery in the attic of the old Presbyterian church—a dead body decomposing beneath a pile of choir robes. The mystery of this is both central to and irrelevant to the story told in Mercury. The book spans nine years and it’s a story about love, loyalty, family, and secrets that can tear them apart or hold them together. This is a deeply character-driven novel—the events of the story don’t matter in the end, it’s the relationships between the characters that do.

Something about the novel feels epic, though it takes place within a decade rather than centuries. The mystery of the story pulled me in, but the characters themselves are what kept me turning the pages. Each character has their own flaws and challenges. The Joseph family seemed so perfect to Marley, but they are as dysfunctional as any family is—flawed but ultimately stronger together.

Marrying into a family doesn’t always mean you are part of the family, at least not all the way. This is the sad and poignant lesson Marley teaches the reader throughout the novel. The prose felt lyrical and at times reminded me of a good southern gothic with its imagery. There is a quietness to the story that creeps up on the reader with its power.

“The arc of a mother’s life shouldn’t have self-sacrifice as it’s inevitable pinnacle.”

Marley spends much of her early years with the Josephs wanting to become Elise. Beautiful, impeccably dressed, and seemingly effortless with perfection—Elise had a coolness to her and an authority that commanded attention. Eventually she learns that Elise’s life isn’t as perfect as it seems, and she doesn’t necessarily want to become the type of mother Elise is. The women are the backbone of the family and the story.

I always know a book has struck me when I am able to feel frustration with the characters as well as empathy. These felt like real people and I was so invested in their stories. Full of moments of happiness, heartbreak, and somber reality, this is a story about resilience and loyalty.

Tense, gripping, and poignant.

About the Author | Amy Jo Burns

Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir Cinderland and the novel Shiner, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, NPR Best Book of the year, and “told in language as incandescent as smoldering coal,” according to The New York Times. Her latest novel, Mercury, is a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, a Book of the Month Pick, a People Magazine Book of the Week, and an Editor’s Choice selection in The New York Times. Amy Jo’s writing has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Elle, Good Housekeeping, and the anthology Not That Bad.

About the Book | Mercury

A roofing family’s bonds of loyalty are tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town―from Amy Jo Burns, author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner

It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.

The Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known―or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.