The Mineral Palace: A Novel

by Heidi Julavits Narrated by Susan Ericksen

Overview

In a bold debut novel of the Great Depression, a young doctor's wife uncovers the sordid secrets of a withering Colorado mining town, even as she struggles with the ravaging truths about her marriage and her child.

In the drought-ridden spring of 1934, Bena Jonnsen, her husband Ted, and their newborn baby relocate from their home in Minnesota to Pueblo, a Western plains town plagued by suffocating dust storms and equally suffocating social structures. Little can thrive in this bleak environment, neither Bena and Ted's marriage nor the baby, whom Bena believes - despite her husband's constant assurances - is slipping away from her.

To distract herself from worrying, Bena accepts a part-time position at Pueblo's daily newspaper, The Chieftain, reporting on the "good works' of the town's elite Ladies' Club leaders, women such as Reimer Lee Jackson and her plans to restore the town's crumbling monument to the mining industry - the Mineral Palace - to its turn-of-the-century grandeur. Bena is drawn to the Mineral Palace and to the lurid hallways of Pueblo's brothel, befriending a prostitute, Maude, and Red, a reticent cowpoke. Through these new emotional entanglements, Bena slowly exposes not only the sexual corruption on which the entire town is founded, but also the lies enclosing her own marriage and the sanctity of motherhood. She returns again and again to the decaying architecture of the Mineral Palace; within its eroding walls she is forced to confront her most terrifying secret, which becomes her only means for salvation.

With her gritty and magical prose, Heidi Julavits elegantly examines the darker side of paternity and maternity, as well as the intersection of parental love and merciful destruction. The Mineral Palace is a startling and authentic story of survival in a world of decadence and depravity.

Editorial Reviews

Esquire

Heidi Julavit's debut novel, The Mineral Palace, is as marvelous as we've seen in a long time. A beautiful, sinister novel.

Newsweek

The Mineral Palace is a marvelous debut novel: harrowing, poetic and tragic enough to satisfy both Faulkner and Oprah.

Amy Tan

Mesmerizing.

Elle

With hard grace and quiet command, The Mineral Palace marks a compelling debut by a strong new voice in fiction.

Denver Post

...an intriguing read.

Voice Literary Supplement

A novel of daring imagination.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

As they drive from Minnesota to her physician husband's new job in Pueblo, Colo., in 1934, Bena Jonssen encounters on-the-run bank thief Bonnie Parker (of Bonnie and Clyde fame), who gives her a tarnished silver charm. This surreal event, and others that follow, invest this compelling, though not flawless, debut novel with a dreamlike immediacy. The Depression, the drought-parched dust bowl landscape, her newborn son's strange lethargy and her knowledge that her husband, Ted, is an inveterate drinker and philanderer, cast grim shadows over Bena's attempts to come to terms with her future. Adding to these burdens are repressed memories of her domineering brother's death when they were young. Outwardly assured, Bena is subject to a surreptitious emotional tic: she obsessively adds and combines numbers--a birth date, her son's measurements, etc.--to divine signs and portents. Bena wins a job on the local newspaper, where she covers the numerous civic clubs that constitute social activism in the economically depressed community. One such project, a plan to restore the Mineral Palace, a crumbling edifice built in 1891 to express the town's boastful pride, when silver mining was its chief industry, proves to have a painful epiphanic significance as Bena finally confronts the fears and traumas that have constricted her life. Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with Red Grissom, a soulful, sensitive rancher with a penchant for rescuing lost causes, and has met a Dickensian cast of townspeople, each of whom is festering with doleful secrets. Julavits can be a magician with language, spinning brilliant metaphors and investing descriptive scenes with almost palpable dimensionality. Her enthusiasm with words sometimes spills over into hyperactive verbiage, however, resulting in such forced images as "bacon thinner than a wedding veil." Several key scenes are shriekingly melodramatic, and prosthetic limbs turn up all too frequently among the eccentric characters (and animals). While Julavits can justly be criticized for overwriting, however, her narrative has the drive to keep readers hooked. Agent, Henry Dunow. Rights sold in Denmark, France, Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In her debut novel, Julavits, a caring writer with a sensitive voice who uses language very skillfully, has fashioned a stark, dark tale of depression, loss, topsy-turvy maternalism, and the death of dreams. When Bena Jonssen, her doctor husband, and infant son relocate to Pueblo, CO, during the Depression years, they see the move as a new beginning. However, Bena has had little experience with dust storms, desolate surroundings, poverty, and rejection. She needs to find out what's wrong with her marriage and why her baby seems different. She also needs to come to an understanding about her brother's death by drowning. Slowly, Bena begins to realize that ordinary people may make strange decisions during times of unusual circumstances. Some readers may find the physical, emotional, and psychological suffering in this novel too overwhelming. The writing, however, is superb. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/00.]--Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, MD Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

New Yorker

In this richly atmospheric first novel, Julavits transposes a Faulkerian gothic to a parched Rocky Mountain setting...

Jeff Giles

A marvelous debut novel: harrowing, poetic and tragic enough to satisfy both Faulkner and Oprah.
—Newsweek

Hillary Rosner

A novel of daring imagination...
—The Voice Literary Supplement, Spotlight on New Writers

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172696510
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	05/25/2005
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Things aren't always as they seem in The Mineral Palace. How does Heidi Julavits use lies and secrets to tell the story?

Q>Inclement weather occurs throughout The Mineral Palace. How does the weather mirror actual events in the novel?

Q>How do superstition and coincidence impact Bena's decisions throughout the story?

Q>Bena's role as a mother is a recurring theme in The Mineral Palace. How does the conclusion affect this role? Do Bena's actions break down what might otherwise be a positive construction of motherhood?

Q>How would the story change if it took place in a different setting - if, for example, Bena and her husband had originally moved to a more fertile part of the country?

Q>How are Maude and Bena alike? How are they different?

Q>What characteristics does Julavits give Maude to set her apart from a stereotypical prostitute?

Q>Why do you think Julavits chose The Mineral Palace as her title? In what way is the Palace at the structural and thematic center of the novel?

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