OMG, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis Is Good

Sometimes the setting in a book becomes a character, and that's something I tried very hard to do with my fictional small town of Snowden, Iowa, in my young adult novel THE OBVIOUS GAME. Recently I received an advanced copy of Keija Parssinen's THE UNRAVELING OF MERCY LOUIS, which is set in the tiny Southern oil town of Port Sabine, Texas. Even though it was below zero when I read this book, I could feel the thick, reeking air of this refinery town on the back of my neck.

There is so much go...