| SYNOPSIS |
| In the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, a mine fire has been burning since 1962. The town has gradually been torn down, building by building, as poison gases and steam from the fire erupt at the surface. Against this backdrop, Jennifer Finney Boylan sets her wildly inventive and hilarious novel. Inspired in part by Holst's symphony of the same name, The Planets examines the complications of desire in the lives of nine of the few remaining Centralians with a wry, deadpan logic. When lovesick Edith Schmertz takes an ill-fated leap out of an airplane on Easter Sunday, she sets in motion an inexorable chain of events, sending many human orbits spinning wildly out of control. A middle-aged bank president seeks temporary escape from a stifling marriage with a professional mime, part-time nudist, and office temp who strips away all externals in her search for pure truth. A little girl's birthday explodes into chaos when a pet rabbit crashes through her bedroom window; an entire family is kidnapped by a burro-riding hardware-store robber; and a modern-day Pluto finds his Persephone. All of these characters are obsessed with human freedom - sexual, personal, psychological - and this rollicking journey through the solar system becomes an inward voyage to the center of the human heart. taken from the cover of the book
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