A Mercy is set in colonial America in the late 17th century when slavery is still in its infancy. Jacob is a European farmer who purchases a wife from an England and grows his household with indentured or enslaved white men, Native American and African women.
Their lives are told in a rich tapestry of interwoven dependency, emotional and physical scars still affecting their lives. They are all hungry for love and attention and negotiate it in different ways.
When the master dies and the mistress is also very ill, their little community is endangered and the youngest member, Florens, ‘with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady,’ needs to go and find the handsome blacksmith, who she is besotted by and who seems to be the only one who can save them.
It is often said that every writer, in essence, tells the same story in every book. For Toni Morrison, that story is the story of the ties between a mother and her child. Quite brilliantly and subversively, she makes it again the centre do this book, too. And the last few pages will hit you emotionally like a sucker punch.
