The mysterious woman gave Bena a charm of a water tower with 'Dodge' stamped across it for luck. As they journeyed west in their black touring car, Bena has a chance run-in with Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde fame, while stopped in Dodge City, Kansas. Jonson had been forced to leave, feeling fortunate to find a position in a small clinic in Pueblo, a dwindling Colorado mining town plagued by dust storms and poverty.

Because there had been a problem in the clinic, Dr. It is 1934 and in the midst of the Great Depression when Bena and her physician husband Ted Jonsson move with their infant son from their home in Minnesota. Although the book quickly took on dark tones as Bena was increasingly forced to confront, not only her own demons, but those of the town of Pueblo, the beautiful and descriptive writing was filled with such compassion and strength to keep one's interest as Bena comes to terms with her roles of wife and mother. The Mineral Palace was the debut novel by author Heidi Julavits published in 2000, so it has been in my library for some time. Julavitz currently lives in Maine and Manhattan with her husband, the writer Ben Marcus, and their children She has also written short stories, such as 'The Santosbrazzi Killer', which was published in Harper's Magazine. It seemed as though their irrelevance was a foregone conclusion, and we were just practicing this quaint exercise of pretending something mattered when of course everyone knew it didn't.' She added her own aim as book critic would be 'to endow something with importance, by treating it as an emotional experience.' Scott how'd she decided on The Believer's tone: 'I really saw 'the end of the book' as originating in the way books are talked about now in our culture and especially in the most esteemed venues for book criticism. In 2005, she told the New York Times culture writer A.O. She wrote the article 'Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!' (subtitled: 'A Call For A New Era Of Experimentation, and a Book Culture That Will Support It') in the debut issue of The Believer, a publication which attempts to avoid snarkiness and 'give people and books the benefit of the doubt.' She later went on to earn an MFA from Columbia University. She was born and grew up in Portland, Maine, before attending Dartmouth College.

Her novels include The Mineral Palace (2000), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003) and The Uses of Enchantment (2006) and The Vanishers (2012). 2, Esquire, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney's Quarterly. She has been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. Heidi Suzanne Julavits is an American author and co-editor of The Believer magazine.

The Mineral Palace by Heidi Julavits