“The Unraveling of Mercy Louis" tells the fascinating story of a community that’s nearly torn apart following a fatal discovery. Set in a small Texas refinery town where the sports team is everything, tensions rise after a baby is found abandoned in a dumpster, igniting a witch hunt for the culprit. Things take a strange turn when the girls at a local high school begin developing mysterious twitches and tics, which quickly intensify. Eventually, the girls in the town start acting as if they’re possessed, thrashing around on the floor or grunting like animals. As strange as it all sounds, Parssinen says the book was inspired by a real episode of mass hysteria in Le Roy, New York.