Eliza Factor

Violence and loss shatter Sarah Marker’s domestic life, causing her to reexamine the roots of creativity and art in NYC.

Love Maps

The Mercury Fountain takes place at the turn of the 20th century in a remote stretch of desert, West Texas. Owen Scraperton, a passionate Yankee, sets out to atone for his misspent youth by starting a utopian paradise in the wilderness. He begins to attract a following within the local population and further afield. Owen founds the economics of this new society upon Mercury mining, lauding its fluidity, beauty and usefulness and disregarding its darker properties. But it isn't long before Owen's utopia begins to unravel...

The Mercury Fountain

“The truest kind of story: about the inconvenience of love, and the choices people make when they’re most afraid” (Amanda Stern, author of Little Panic). Sarah Marker, an artist who ekes out a living teaching at a fancy Connecticut high school, hasn’t seen her husband in seven years. But now she’s received a letter from Philip, and he wants to visit. The two never formally cut ties; they simply drifted apart and into a state of ambivalence—and now, as much as Sarah would like to see him, she is terrified at what he will do when he discovers that she has a son. Sarah bundles up her child and once again takes flight, in this novel that spans back in forth in time and journeys into the 1980s art scene in New York City—and ultimately, she must confront the terrible events surrounding Philip’s departure, and reconcile her own fractured experience of family, including the successful sister who has long overshadowed her. “Powerfully written. . . . From its tense opening chapter to its memorable conclusion, this is a read-in-one-sitting trip.” —Publishers Weekly “Compelling . . . A poignant picture of familial and romantic love and their complexities.” —Library Journal “Who can plot the turns and reversals of the heart? Who can follow its illogical loyalties and mysterious obsessions? Who can reconcile its competing claims from lovers and family? Eliza Factor, that’s who, in this stunningly assured novel about a pair of sisters—one a successful artist, the other a famous singer—and the handsome architect who comes between them. The cover should come with a warning to put your life on hold for a few days, because once you pick it up, you won’t be able to do anything else until you finish.” —Bliss Broyard, author of One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life—A Story of Race and Family Secrets

A Novel

A unique and hopeful story of how one woman and her family were transformed by her child's multiple disabilities and inability to talk and how she, in turn, transformed a community. This intimate, no-holds barred memoir shares one family's experiences with a child who is both autistic and physically disabled. It is a story of infectious laughter, blood on the floor, intense physical conflict, and of two little girls growing up in the shadow of their charming and fitful brother. And it is the story of a mother and writer and the illuminating effect of imagining the world through the eyes of her beautiful, charismatic, and nonverbal son, Felix. Felix and his sisters inspire Eliza to start Extreme Kids, a community center that connects families with children with disabilities through the arts and play, and transform how she saw herself and the world. She writes of the joy this project brings her, as well as the disconnect of being lauded for helping others at the same time that she cannot help her own son. As Felix grows bigger and stronger, his assaults against himself grow more destructive. When his bruised limbs and face prompt Child Services to investigate the Factors for abuse, Eliza realizes how dangerous her home has become. Strange Beauty is a personal story, but it shines a light on the combustible conditions many families are living in at this moment. The United States offers parents whose children are prone to violence very little help. That Eliza's story ends happily, with Felix thriving at Crotched Mountain School, is due more to luck than policy. There are few such schools and many such children. When children are violent, we fail to account for the internal and external pressures that lead to violence. This is both cruel and counterproductive, for people with disabilities have much to teach us, if we will only listen.

Eliza Factor

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