"The Mercury Fountain" with Eliza Factor
- When
- Wed Apr 11, 2012
- Where
- Modern Times Bookstore Collective
- Time
- 7 pm - 9 pm
- Tags
- Literary Arts, Author Appearances
Description
An enchanting first novel exploring a fractured utopian communityon the Texas/Mexico border at the turn of the twentieth century.
Eliza Factor presents her fantastic debut novel, "The Mercury Fountain"
THE MERCURY FOUNTAIN takes place at the turn of the twentieth century in a remote and beautiful stretch of Chihuahuan desert near the border of West Texas and Mexico. Owen Scraperton, a passionate Yankee seeking to atone for his misspent youth, leaves the comforts of Boston's Beacon Hill for a fresh start in the wilderness. The story follows Owen's pursuits as he struggles to establish Pristina, a utopian community that attempts to resolve the great questions of labor and race by upholding the ideals of "clarity, unity, and purpose." The economic foundation of this new world is based on the mining of mercury, a metal that Owen upholds for its usefulness, fluidity, and beauty, while disregarding its darker and more harmful aspects. Although Owen's thinking may not always be rational, his heart is sincere, and his voice is rich and seductive. He attracts followers from both the Northeast and the local population, just the heterogeneous mix he needs to test his social theories.
more: http://www.akashicbooks.com/mercuryfountain.htm
"Eliza Factor's first novel, The Mercury Fountain, explores what happens when a life driven by ideology confronts implacable truths of science and human nature. It also shows how leaders can inflict damage by neglecting the real needs of real people. Though the action takes place between 1900 and 1923, the resonance feel alarmingly contemporary. . . Factor counters convention with a sharp sense of character, evocative subplots and the dangerous allure of mercury itself."
--New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice
"Factor develops her characters in entertaining ways while building a novel of social realism."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Eliza Factor has wrought a strange, tough book that digs deep into the mind. At turns poetic and eerie, startling and transcendent, it charts the twisting regions of the heart. I haven't read a book quite like it before--its historical portrait of an alternative world in the Mexican borderlands is hypnotic."
--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Into the Beautiful North
***
ELIZA FACTOR was born in 1968 in Boston and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and three children. This is her first novel.
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