Mercury

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.