A Mercy

Description

On the day that Jacob, an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, agrees to accept a slave in lieu of payment of a debt from a plantation owner, little Florens' life changes. With her intelligence and passion for wearing the cast-off shoes of her mistress, Florens has never blended into the background and now at the age of eight she is taken from her family to begin a new life. She ends up part of Jacob's household, along with his wife Rebekka, Lina their Native American servant and the strange and melancholy Sorrow who was rescued from a shipwreck. Together these women face the trials of their harsh environment as Jacob attempts to carve out a place for himself in the brutal landscape of the north of America in the seventeenth century.

Promotion info

The long-awaited new novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved.

Author description

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of many novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), Paradise and Love. She has also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction.