Keija Parssinen Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Keija Parssinen is a successful published author.

She is known for her debut novel The Ruins of Us, which has won a Michener-Copernicus Award, made the long list for the Chautauqua Prize, was picked by National Geographic Traveler as Book of the Month, and was picked as a Best Book of the Middle East Region 2013 by Turkey’s Today’s Zaman newspaper.

Her second novel The Unraveling of Mercy Louis was also well-received and has won an Alex Award from the American Library Association. It also was picked as a Best Book of the Year by Missouri Life, the Kansas City Star, the Lone Star Literary Life, and Vox Magazine. It was also selected as a Book of the Month by Emily St. John Mandel.

She attended Princeton University, studying English literature and getting a certificate from the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. Keija received her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. There she was a Truman Capote fellow, a Teaching and Writing Fellow, and student editor for the Iowa Short Fiction contest.

She was a Visiting Professor of fiction writing in 2014 at Louisiana State University. Her writing has also been featured in the Lonely Planet travel writing anthologies as well as the New Delta Review, Five Chapters, Salon, Marie Claire, and other publications. Her short fiction, reviews and essays have also been featured in such places as The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, the New York Review of Books Daily, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, Slate, The Brooklyn Quarterly, The Arkansas International, Slice Magazine, Off Assignment, and more.

Keija was born in Saudi Arabia. She lived there for twelve years before moving to Austin, Texas with her family. She has had her work supported by residencies and fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, Hedgebrook, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, Playa Summer Lake, the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, and the Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow (where she also served as a My Time Fellow).

The Ruins of Us is the debut novel from Keija Parssinen. It is a compelling first novel that looks into the loneliness that expatriate life can contain as well as the dangers of intolerance and the things that we sometimes do for love.

It has been over two decades since she moved to Saudi Arabia and got married to Abdullah Baylani, a man of power. But the American-born Rosalie is stunned when she finds out that the man that she is married to has taken on a second life.

The revelation puts their formerly ordered family life into chaos. Rosalie has to contend with this new information as well as the possibility of leaving her family, her life, and the country behind and starting again or potentially staying.

Then there are Abudllah and Rosalie’s personal entanglements which tie them to the crisis that is approaching Faisal, their sixteen year old son. His resentment toward their lifestyle has given way to him being involved with a controversial sheikh.

Then Faisal makes a decision that could end up ruining everything that his family cares about. They all have to take on tough truths as they do what they can to preserve what is left of their world. This is a fascinating story that is all about family, intolerance, and the injustices that we often go through for love. Check out a new voice in fiction and witness the debut of Keija Parssinen in literature by checking out this book!

The Unraveling of Mercy Louis is the second book from Keija Parssinen. It is the winner of the 2016 Alex Award and according to Kansas City Star is the Best Book of 2015. If you love psychological suspense thrillers, then be sure to check this book out!

A fatal discovery close to the high school sets off a witch hunt in a refinery town in Southeast Texas. As a result, it will unearth family and communal secrets that may end up threatening the lives of the girls in town.

Port Sabine is a place where the air is full of oil and superstition is still in play. Many people’s dreams are hinging on making a winning play. That means that plenty of people are paying attention to Mercy Louis, who is the star of the girls’ basketball team.

It seems clear that Mercy is headed for greatness, but it’s not so easy to get out of town and the road out is full of obstacles. Then there’s her grandmother Evelia, an evangelical who has visions of the Rapture and perceives herself to be the keeper of Mercy’s virtue. There are also the strange letters from Charmaine, Mercy’s mother who abandoned her at birth, as well as Travis, the boy who will end up shaking the foundation of her faith.

At the outside of Mercy’s world is the team manager Illa Stark. She is a wallflower who is pretty lonely and spends most of her time taking care of her depressed mother, who was injured in an accident at the refinery. Just like the rest of the town, this girl is impressed by Mercy’s talent as well as her beauty. But a note found in her gym locker shows that Mercy’s life might not be the perfect thing that it appears to be.

The last day of school brings along with it a shocking discovery. As the summer goes on and the police look into it, each of the girls there turns into a suspect. Then Mercy collapses on the season’s opening night, and Evelia espouses a prophecy that she is just gong to be the first to fall.

Soon the other girls are affected by this strange condition, which upends the town. Illa and Mercy may come together in a way that no one saw coming. Unsettling, evocative, engaging and more, this story follows along with the golden girl of a town while also exploring the tough nature and anxiety that it can be to be a girl in America. Read this book to experience it for yourself!