Mercury - Amy Jo Burns

 

"Two young women arrived in this town, twenty years apart. The first was named Elise, the second named Marley. They lived in the same house. They loved the same men. They raised their children. Elise never loved Marley like a daughter, and yet together they built a family."

Elise and Marley even shared a surname. The difference is that Elise gave birth to the three Joseph boys, and Marley married one of them before giving birth to a Joseph boy of her own.

Mercury is a coming-of-age novel in which it is not always clear who is coming of age and who is doing the raising, especially when it comes to Marley. When she arrives in Mercury, Pennsylvania, Marley is more concerned with fitting in to her new high school than finding a new boyfriend. It's not like Marley dosen't know what to expect because her mother, constantly on the lookout for a better paying nursing job, is always up for a fresh start in a new town. This time, though it's going to be very different. 

Marley immediately catches the eye of one of the Jospeh boys, and before she knows it she's become a regular at the family dinner table. Right up until, that is, the moment she's unceremoniously dumped by Baylor Joseph - only to secretly take up with the steady one in the family, Baylor's younger brother, Waylon. (And yes, the notorious Joseph boys are known locally as Bay, Way, and Shay.) By nature, as well as by circumstance, Marley is a loner, but what she aches for more than anything else in the world is a family of her own and, as she sees it, a "place at someone's table." 

She gets more than she bargained for with the Josephs, becoming a surrogate mother to the youngest boy, manager of the family roofing business, and protector of the woman who never really stops resenting her. That Marley becomes as loyal a member of the Joseph family as any of them is no accident, but her ability to hold the family together is seriously tested years later by a disturbing discovery that Waylon and Baylor make in the church attic. The Joseph family has secrets...and Marley wants to help them keep it that way.

"Do you think it's possible to spend your life loving the wrong people?"   (Waylon)

"I think it's more likely that we love the right people the wrong way."      (Jade, Marley's best friend)

Mercury is one of those character-driven novels that, layer by layer, make themselves really difficult to put down. Even when I wasn't turning pages, I sometimes found myself wondering about the main characters and what Burns would reveal about them next. My biggest surprise is who the real hero of the Joseph story turns out to be, and how that realization made the book so much more memorable to me than I expected it would ever be. This one is perfect for book club reads because you'll find yourself wanting to talk about it with someone else who's read it, too. Good stuff. 

Amy Jo Burns jacket photo