A Mercy

Fiction & Literature, African American, Coming of Age, Literary
Cover of the book A Mercy by Toni Morrison, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
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Author: Toni Morrison ISBN: 9780307270443
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Publication: November 11, 2008
Imprint: Vintage Language: English
Author: Toni Morrison
ISBN: 9780307270443
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication: November 11, 2008
Imprint: Vintage
Language: English

National Bestseller

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year

In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.

A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter—a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

National Bestseller

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year

In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.

A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter—a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.

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