Amidst clouds of dust and with a sense of purpose born of the Great Depression, Bena Jonsson -- young mother, physician's wife -- arrives in the desert town of Pueblo, Colorado, and immediately sets about creating a new life for her family. As the days unfold, however, she is quietly haunted by niggling doubts and an insidious loneliness, so she gratefully seizes the chance to explore her stalled career in journalism and accepts an unpaid position with the local paper. But bad omens begin stacking up like charms on a bracelet, and when Bena meets a prostitute accused of infanticide, her defence of the woman triggers a chain of events with unfathomable consequences. Written with an impeccable sense of history and full of impending doom, The Mineral Palace is a stylish corruption of the Medea myth -- a tragic love story and an indictment of society's treatment of untameable, liberated women.
