Pueblo's eccentric inhabitants include an extraordinary number of wounded individuals and barren mothers the reader begins to wonder if anyone in this town is healthy. It's little wonder that Pueblo's inhabitants find self-preservation an ordeal and are driven to repress many of their emotions.Īt times, The Mineral Palace gets too ambitious for its own good, succumbing to overwriting and heavy-handedness. Death seems to lie in wait everywhere, claiming even the fish in Ted Jonssen's artificial pond and the stray cats who wander Pueblo's alleys. The exterior landscape mirrors and molds the interior psyche of its inhabitants: Sudden dust storms constantly threaten Bena's family Pueblo itself is hazardous and disease-ridden. Her descriptions paint vivid, menacing pictures of Pueblo and its surroundings. Instead of proving purgative, Bena's confrontation with her past leads only to more ugliness and turmoil.

The Mineral Palace is layered with Bena's flashbacks, which are often gruesome and sometimes sensationalistic. The demons of her childhood surface as she comes to face the deceits of her own marriage. Bena sets out to unravel the strange connection between them, together with such kindred mysteries as the paternity of Maude's child and their link to the crumbling edifice of the Mineral Palace.Īs Bena's quest for truth gains momentum, it turns into her own journey of self-discovery. She is intrigued by this woman's desperation and the devotion of Red Grissom, the alluring cowboy who often accompanies her. Soon after she starts work as a reporter for Pueblo's newspaper, she has several encounters with Maude, a pregnant prostitute, in a nearby alley. What lies ahead is a strange tale of mystery and deception that is, by turns, engaging and confusing.Īn outsider to the insular, decaying town of Pueblo, Bena begins to uncover the secrets and infidelities that threaten to unravel her own marriage and the lives of those around her. Julavits's dark novel follows Bena's futile attempts to control events as they spiral out of control. She obsessively records and interprets numbers-the miles they have traveled, the time of day, their son's height and weight-for clues to the future. Given to bouts of anxiety, Bena somewhat desperately places her faith in idiosyncratic superstitions. Ted dismisses his wife's apprehensions that the boy is not normal. As Bena cradles their fragile infant son, her husband drives across an American landscape filled with ghost towns and outlaws. We meet the young couple during their move from St. Set during the Depression, The Mineral Palace begins half-shrouded in mystery. Heidi Julavits's first novel charts the slow awakening of Bena Jonssen, a new mother and wife of a doctor, Ted Jonssen.

The Mineral Palace by Heidi Julavits