The Unraveling of Mercy Louis: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Winner of the 2016 Alex Award
Best Book of 2015 —Kansas City Star
In this intricate novel of psychological suspense, a fatal discovery near the high school ignites a witch-hunt in a Southeast Texas refinery town, unearthing communal and family secrets that threaten the lives of the town’s girls.
In Port Sabine, the air is thick with oil, superstition reigns, and dreams hang on making a winning play. All eyes are on Mercy Louis, the star of the championship girls’ basketball team. Mercy seems destined for greatness, but the road out of town is riddled with obstacles. There is her grandmother, Evelia, a strict evangelical who has visions of an imminent Rapture and sees herself as the keeper of Mercy’s virtue. There are the cryptic letters from Charmaine, the mother who abandoned Mercy at birth. And then there’s Travis, the boy who shakes the foundation of her faith.
At the periphery of Mercy’s world floats team manager Illa Stark, a lonely wallflower whose days are spent caring for a depressed mother crippled in a refinery accident. Like the rest of the town, Illa is spellbound by Mercy’s beauty and talent, but a note discovered in Mercy’s gym locker reveals that her life may not be as perfect as it appears.
The last day of school brings the disturbing discovery, and as summer unfolds and the police investigate, every girl becomes a suspect. When Mercy collapses on the opening night of the season, Evelia prophesies that she is only the first to fall, and soon, other girls are afflicted by the mysterious condition, sending the town into a tailspin, and bringing Illa and Mercy together in an unexpected way.
Evocative and unsettling, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis charts the downfall of one town’s golden girl while exploring the brutality and anxieties of girlhood in America.
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Keija Parssinen. (2015). The Unraveling of Mercy Louis: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Keija Parssinen. 2015. The Unraveling of Mercy Louis: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Keija Parssinen, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2015.
MLA Citation (style guide)Keija Parssinen. The Unraveling of Mercy Louis: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2015.
| Library | Owned | Available |
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| Shared Digital Collection | 2 | 2 |
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Keija Parssinen is the author of The Ruins of Us, which won a Michener-Copernicus Award. Raised in Saudi Arabia and Texas, she is a graduate of Princeton University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Parssinen is an assistant professor of English at Kenyon College, where she teaches fiction writing.
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Winner of the 2016 Alex Award
Best Book of 2015 —Kansas City Star
In this intricate novel of psychological suspense, a fatal discovery near the high school ignites a witch-hunt in a Southeast Texas refinery town, unearthing communal and family secrets that threaten the lives of the town’s girls.
In Port Sabine, the air is thick with oil, superstition reigns, and dreams hang on making a winning play. All eyes are on Mercy Louis, the star of the championship girls’ basketball team. Mercy seems destined for greatness, but the road out of town is riddled with obstacles. There is her grandmother, Evelia, a strict evangelical who has visions of an imminent Rapture and sees herself as the keeper of Mercy’s virtue. There are the cryptic letters from Charmaine, the mother who abandoned Mercy at birth. And then there’s Travis, the boy who shakes the foundation of her faith.
At the periphery of Mercy’s world floats team manager Illa Stark, a lonely wallflower whose days are spent caring for a depressed mother crippled in a refinery accident. Like the rest of the town, Illa is spellbound by Mercy’s beauty and talent, but a note discovered in Mercy’s gym locker reveals that her life may not be as perfect as it appears.
The last day of school brings the disturbing discovery, and as summer unfolds and the police investigate, every girl becomes a suspect. When Mercy collapses on the opening night of the season, Evelia prophesies that she is only the first to fall, and soon, other girls are afflicted by the mysterious condition, sending the town into a tailspin, and bringing Illa and Mercy together in an unexpected way.
Evocative and unsettling, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis charts the downfall of one town’s golden girl while exploring the brutality and anxieties of girlhood in America.
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- source: Emily St. John Mandel, Book of the Month pick
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"An impeccably rendered depiction of the strains of adolescence. . . . Broadly relevant to our present cultural moment . . . This is a beautifully written, humane, and extremely compelling book." — Emily St. John Mandel, Book of the Month pick
"Rapturous. . . . Like a deft Texas two-step, Parssinen's work swings through local terror and youthful awakening." — Time Out New York
"Blend H.G. Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights" and Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" with Laura Moriarty's "The Center of Everything" and you would have the flavor of this atmospheric book." — Kansas City Star
"The finest Salem-inspired novel since Esther Forbes' 1928 A Mirror for Witches. . . . Parssinen keeps her plot tight (and increasingly unsettling, even creepy), she never lets her characters become mere chess pieces, and she is near perfect in portraying her swampy southeast Texas setting." — Dallas Morning News
"Beautiful and awful, enraging and sad, atmospheric and page-turning: an accomplished novel." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"I devoured The Unraveling of Mercy Louis. It is everything I hope for in a book: beautifully written, loaded with suspense, and filled with characters I cared deeply about. A great novel that I will be recommending to everyone." — Kathleen Grissom, New York Times Bestselling author of The Kitchen House
"Urgent, deliciously dark and sumptuously gothic. . . . Like the girls on Mercy's basketball team, who 'balance so perfectly between control and chaos,' Parssinen has an intuitive grasp of language's vital rhythms." — New York Times Book Review
"Beautifully written and skillfully crafted, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis is a compelling tale of longing and loss that evocatively examines the harsh realities of female adolescence." — Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author of Reconstructing Amelia
"Past crimes run a dark thread through this coming-of-age fable that calls to mind Laura Lippman's stand-alone novels and even The Scarlet Letter. Parssinen excels here at capturing the dueling emotions that rule teenage girls' relationships, and the dire consequences of societal pressures." — Booklist
"The Unraveling of Mercy Louis is the story of a Texas town that fears everything its girls offer. A deft and thoughtful novel of feints and dodges about a community brought to its knees by prejudice, disappointments, and a past that can't be changed." — Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet
"A mysterious murder sends a quiet town—and a quiet girl—into turmoil." — Cosmopolitan
"Parssinen is an incredible writer and storyteller. . . . She transports you to teenaged life in small town Texas, and presents the evangelical and psychic/psychological with nuance and thoughtfulness. . . . Keija's storytelling grips, while dangling you beyond the precipice of comfort." — Ann Imig, Founder & Editor, Listen to Your Mother
"The language is lyrical and the story beyond gripping. . . . This is a book you can truly get lost in, and trust me, you will not want to be found." — Hello Giggles
"A page-turning oracle of a novel and a chilling reminder of the consequences rendered when young women are exalted as pillars of...
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January 12, 2015
Parssinen follows up The Ruins of Us, her debut, a portrait of a Saudia Arabian family in turmoil, with a less-nuanced tale of extremism, this time in Port Sabine, a Gulf Coast town redolent of “swamp rot and refinery gas.” Contributing to the miasma-like atmosphere are factors environmental and moral. As Port Sabine’s refinery spews noxious fumes into the air, the discovery of a baby’s corpse in a dumpster unleashes a pervasive sense of unease. Soon the town finds itself in the grips of religious fundamentalism, witch hunts, misogyny, and a “mass psychogenic disorder” in which girls lose control of their bodies. At the center of it all is Mercy Louis, a seventh-generation Cajun and star basketball player who was abandoned by her teenaged mother as an infant. She is raised by her grandmother, Maw Maw, a zealot who demands that Mercy, tainted by her supposed “weak blood,” be “twice as good as other girls.” Enamored of Mercy is Illa Stark, a shy photographer whose mother has never recovered from injuries sustained in a devastating refinery explosion. Mercy’s and Illa’s respective family dramas and sexual awakenings are nicely drawn, but the surrounding characters—fanatics, slimy energy executives, and poetry-spouting boyfriends—tend to be two-dimensional and the dialogue occasionally melodramatic. Despite some beautifully eerie touches, Parssinen’s combustible mix of Bayou gothic, morality tale, and coming-of-age story never quite ignites.
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December 1, 2015
An adult title that could have easily been published as YA. The teen protagonists are complicated and damaged, and the adults around them are clueless and sometimes cruel. At the heart of the story is Mercy Louis, a basketball star with a lifelong streak of control and perfection. She is at the end of her junior year in high school and coming off a devastating loss at the State basketball championship. What was supposed to be a triumph for her, her team, and her small Texas town, Port Sabine, has her numb with embarrassment. Like a harbinger of bad news, the team's loss begins a downward spiral for both Mercy and the town itself. The body of a newborn baby is found in a dumpster, and Port Sabine becomes a place that looks at its teenage girls with suspicion and contempt as police search for the child's mother. Along with the heat, tensions rise throughout the summer at home and in town. Mercy's long-lost mother reappears in her life, and the teen falls in love. Mercy finds herself wondering if being perfect and staying in control for God and basketball is what she wants after all. Her doubts will resonate with teens, especially those who have become disenchanted with authority figures and adult hypocrisy. Port Sabine's obsession with both Mercy and the virtues she represents make this dark coming-of-age story a compelling read. VERDICT Parssinen has created fully realized teen characters in a religious Southern small town straight out of a Carson McCullers short story.-Meghan Cirrito, formerly at Brooklyn Public Library
Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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February 15, 2015
More is poisoned than just the air in the small refinery town of Port Sabine, TX. The discovery of a dead newborn in a dumpster brings out the worst of the community, firing up small-minded politicians and launching a witch hunt to find and punish the mother. It is no wonder that Mercy Louis and her fellow high school seniors are scrambling for passports out of town. As a basketball standout Mercy should have it made. An athletic scholarship is on the cards until the pressures from home, the town, and her own fears cause her body to crumble. Mercy's spasms affect those around her, including her rigidly fundamentalist grandmother, her best friend, Annie, who uses sex to compensate for unloving parents, and Illa, the self-effacing team manager trapped into caring for a bitter mother. They will betray one another before finding ways to face fears, uncover secrets, and offer forgiveness. VERDICT The solid pacing and strong characters in the author's second novel (after The Ruins of Us) provide a captivating read with the same tension and pleasures of being caught up in a well-matched and high-energy basketball game. [See Prepub Alert, 9/29/14.]--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Winner of the 2016 Alex Award
Best Book of 2015 —Kansas City Star
In this intricate novel of psychological suspense, a fatal discovery near the high school ignites a witch-hunt in a Southeast Texas refinery town, unearthing communal and family secrets that threaten the lives of the town’s girls.
In Port Sabine, the air is thick with oil, superstition reigns, and dreams hang on making a winning play. All eyes are on Mercy Louis, the star of the championship girls’ basketball team. Mercy seems destined for greatness, but the road out of town is riddled with obstacles. There is her grandmother, Evelia, a strict evangelical who has visions of an imminent Rapture and sees herself as the keeper of Mercy’s virtue. There are the cryptic letters from Charmaine, the mother who abandoned Mercy at birth. And then there’s Travis, the boy who shakes the foundation of her faith.
At the periphery of Mercy’s world floats team...
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