The Heaven Of Mercury — Brad Watson

Finus Bates has loved chatty, elegant Birdie Wells ever since he saw her cartwheel naked through the woods near the backwater town of Mercury, Mississippi, in 1917. Having "caught hold of some loose line in her that would attach itself to stray wildness," and never let go, he's loved her for some eighty years: through their marriages to other people, through the mysterious early death of Birdie's womanizing husband, Earl, and through all the poisonous accusations against Birdie by Earl's no-good relatives.

A gorgeous portrayal of lifelong friendship, restless passion, marital discord and accommodation, aging and remembrance, death and afterlife, The Heaven of Mercury is inscribed in prose so eerily fine it is one of life's true pleasures.