Finus Bates has loved elegant, chatty Birdie Wells for eighty years, ever since he saw her cartwheel naked through the woods near the backwater town of Mercury, Mississippi, in 1917. Later Finus won Birdie at poker, but then he lost her again . . . All around the town, Watson's characters dream about the missed opportunities of their lives, the fleeting chances when their courage failed them; Parnell, the town undertaker, whose unspeakable desires bring lust for life and death together; Creasie and her Aunt Vish, descended from slaves, who consider Mercury a cage. Brad Watson brings his own unique, mordant wit to the traditional darkness of Southern Gothic, recalling the work of such writers as William Faulkner, Toni Morrison and Flannery O'Connor. The Heaven of Mercury is a sumptuous portrayal of lifelong friendship, restless passion, marital discord, ageing and transcendence.