Dour, scattered, unpleasant little tale with a wandering plot full of oddly-named people who maim each other's bodies and souls in flamboyant, and often implausible, ways. No one's behavior made sense at any turn. Nearly every human interaction with few exceptions was abusive or exploitative in some fashion. The setting seemed poorly imagined and was full of anachronisms. Wildly farfetched dialogue and not a single likable character. Happy to leave this one behind. ( )

This is supposed to be set in the mining town of Pueblo, Colorado. Not even close. Pueblo is a steel making town, not a mining town. There are no mining shacks near the Steel mill. Pueblo is securely set on the edge of the Great Plains and is in all ways the birth place of Colorado. All mining for the raw materials takes place in the foothills about 90 miles away.
Mineral Palace was a grand building intended to showcase the ore and minerals to be found in Colorado. It was placed in a still lovely Mineral Palace Park near downtown. The Palace was not maintained, built with a wood foundation and sadly, torn down many, many years ago.
Queen Silver is still missing. The easy money in Pueblo is on her being hidden in the basement of one of the descendants of one of the many made men who called Pueblo home back in the day.
This is just a very poorly written and researched romance novel, not at all what I care to read.
I hold out hope that in my life time somebody's house is going to catch on fire and when the fire fighters show up to save the house Queen Silver will be found! ( )

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/153814937153/the-mineral-palace-by-heidi-julavits

…The truth was that she’s come to see her husband’s infidelities as a relief. She and Ted had created a comfortable life inside of which they could hide from themselves and each other. The distance he maintained from her in order to protect his philandering meant that she could rightly be unknowable to him, and he to her.

A novel, disappointing in its unriveting action, provides at times a concept worth considering. But why Julavits persisted in having this rather weak work published feels almost desperate in her obsession, perhaps at any cost, to be seen, and considered, a novelist. Her nonfiction, or for argument a contrivance we might name creative nonfiction, is so vastly superior to a “made-up” fiction relying on dehydrated tools called plot that reading this first novel was a monumental struggle. The problem wasn’t only my previous encounter with [b:The Folded Clock: A Diary|22716391|The Folded Clock A Diary|Heidi Julavits|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1419180457s/22716391.jpg|42243652] and how much I loved it, but the often held feeling I was now wasting my time reading this too-conventional first novel. But Julavits is smart and uses her personal studies to further enrich her fiction if the reader chooses to invest the time needed to discover hidden gems she plants in clear sight.

Julavits, in interviews, mentions the psychoanalyst [a:Adam Phillips|33751|Adam Phillips|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363466197p2/33751.jpg] as a writer she reads. As relates to The Mineral Palace he writes in his book [b:Monogamy|763684|Monogamy|Adam Phillips|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320552119s/763684.jpg|749766] that:

The best hideout—the cosiest one—is the one in which you can forget what you are hiding from; or that you are hiding at all. The secret the couple have to keep—mostly from each other—is what they are hiding from and that they are hiding. The belief they have to sustain is that their fears are the same.

We have couples because it is impossible to hide alone.

And as much as I appreciate the work of Adam Phillips, and am grateful for Julavits and my introduction to him, The Mineral Palace fails to sustain me any longer. The writing is simply not good enough to continue on with reading further than page 132. The failure of Julavits to keep me engaged unfortunately rests in her allegiance to literary convention. It is my hope that successive fiction coming from the pen of Heidi Julavits proves to be one-of-a-kind, unique in its example, and demanding of my time. She is too talented a writer to pretend to be a mainstream novelist. ( )

I got about half way through this, then put it down in favor of a book that I was asked to review. I find myself avoiding picking it back up because of the sadness of the story. Call me a wimp, but I need cheerfulness or hopefulness right now. Perhaps I'll explore this again some day. ( )

This was quite a good book. It takes place in Colorado during the dust bowl years. The setting is quite interesting and the small town comes to life with it quirky inhabitants. Bena, Tom, and their small son Tom jr, moved to Pueblo so Tom can take a position as a doctor in the town. Bena works for the small town newspaper and something is not quite right with Little Tom. From there, the cast of characters grows and becomes a collection of the towns most memorable residents. Bena is always searching for that something she is missing in her life and Tom seems to find what he is searching for around every corner and in every home. My one criticism with this novel is the fact that the chapters are terribly long. I like to read and stop at the end of a chapter, this book is not like that. I would definately read something else by this author. ( )