The Mercury Fountain

April 16, 2012
Factor's engrossing debut novel is set at the turn of the 20th century in the Chihuahuan desert town of Pristina, an ostensible utopia formed by the charismatic, Massachusetts-born Owen Scraperton in an effort to reunite Man and Nature through labor. The settlement subsists on money brought in from mining mercury, a deceptive element that proves to be a stirring symbol of mankind's tempestuous relationships with each other, society, and the land. While Owen grooms his daughter, Victoria, to lead the community into the future, his wife, Doloresâthe daughter of an aristocratic Mexican family fallen on hard timesâbemoans the life to which she has consigned herself. In addition, town doctor Badinoeâwith whom Dolores has struck up a friendshipâis compiling research for a book on the hazardous effects of mercury, which Owen systematically rejects. As the element's fickle nature comes to light, the stability of the town is threatened. There is an eerie sense in this waterless oasis that a dedication to purity breeds sickness, and Factor's fierce and humbling prose expertly enunciates the sadness of an ideal's confrontation with reality.

February 1, 2012
In the early years of the 20th century, Owen Scraperton tries to establish a Utopian community around a Mercury mine in the hardscrabble landscape of southwest Texas, but his efforts, not surprisingly, wind up in failure. At first life seems good in Pristina, the aptly named community Owen labors to develop. He has his workers subscribe to a number of morally admirable principles involving Clarity, Unity and Purpose. The pragmatic results of these principles involve the dignity of labor, a ban on alcohol, gambling and tobacco, and perhaps more surprisingly a proscription against "Superstition" (or "Artificial Knowledge"), which includes all religions. Owen's world revolves not just around his workers and the Pristina community but also around Victoria, his loving daughter, and Dolores, his not-quite-so-loving wife. Factor starts her narrative with the birth of Victoria and ends it 23 years later, at Owen's death. In between we learn of the difficulties in mining mercury, of Victoria's strong attachment both to her father and to the idea of Pristina, and of Dolores' dissatisfaction with domesticity; she much prefers the gentility of urban life to the physical and cultural isolation of the great Southwest. While Owen is for obvious reasons a strong proponent for the "magical" qualities of mercury, eventually the market price drops, and, much to Victoria's disgust, he finds himself forced to close one of the shafts and turn away from the principles Pristina was founded on. Factor develops her characters in entertaining ways while building a novel of social realism.

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February 1, 2012
Mercury, the Roman deity of commerce, is the perfect icon for Factor's first novel, a family drama set in Pristina, an American outpost in the Chihuahuan wilderness in the early 1900s. The plot traces the literal and figurative fortunes of the Scraperton familyOwen, town founder and utopian visionary; his freethinking wife, Dolores; and their hardheaded daughter, Victoriaas they rise and fall with the price of the mercury that is mined deep beneath the town. After a frustrated attempt to lobby national lawmakers for a railroad extension and a disfiguring injury to Victoria, a series of incidents threatens to send Pristina spiraling into the dust. A plot to poison the water supply, dismissed as the empty threat of a disgruntled miner, comes to fruition years later when mercury prices plummet. Dolores reverts to her native Catholicism. Victoria mimics a Hopi snake danceher forked tongue is another item in Factor's well-crafted set of symbolsto seduce a mistakenly wanted man. Finally, Owen's descent into obsessive denial functions as the axis around which the fates of Pristina and the Scrapertons entwine.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)