KEIJA PARSSINEN, "The Unraveling Of Mercy Lewis", in conversation with Nancy Davis Kho

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April 15, 2015 - 7:00pm

Novelist Keija Parssinen joins us on Wednesday April 15th to celebrate the publication of her second novel, "The Unraveling Of Mercy Lewis". She'll be in conversation with local writer Nancy Davis Kho. 

 

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. 

 

 

Keija Parssinen is the author of The Ruins of Us, a Michener-Copernicus award-winning novel. A graduate of Princeton University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote fellow, Keija is the Director of the Quarry Heights Writers’ Workshop, a community for Columbia, MO’s creative writers.

Nancy Davis Kho is an Oakland writer whose essays and humor writing appear in the San Francisco Chronicle as well as on the Huffington Post, NickMom.com, The Toast, The Rumpus, and her own blog, MidlifeMixtape.com (“for the years between being hip and breaking one.”)

 

The Unraveling of Mercy Louis: A Novel By Keija Parssinen Cover Image
$25.99
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780062319098
Published: Harper - March 10th, 2015

Location: 

6120 LaSalle Avenue
94611 Oakland
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