A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize--winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.In the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas, virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression …
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A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize--winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.In the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas, virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression were rife, providing the fertile soil in which slavery and race hatred were planted and took root.Jacob 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, "with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady." Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.There are other voices: Lina, whose tribe was decimated by smallpox; their mistress, Rebekka, herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England; Sorrow, a strange girl who's spent her early years at sea; and finally the devastating voice of Florens' mother. These are all men and women inventing themselves in the wilderness.A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.Acts of mercy may have unforeseen consequences.From the Hardcover edition.
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A mercy
195 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2009 by Vintage International.
- ISBN:
- 978-0-307-27676-6Copied ISBN!
- OCLC Number:
- 299708877
A mercy
195 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2009 by Vintage International.
- ISBN:
- 978-0-307-27676-6Copied ISBN!
- OCLC Number:
- 299708877
Mercy
176 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2009 by Penguin Random House.
- ISBN:
- 978-0-09-950254-8Copied ISBN!
A mercy
167 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2008 by Knopf.
- ISBN:
- 978-0-307-26423-7Copied ISBN!
Una bendición
Hardcover, 189 pages
Spanish language
Published July 15, 2009 by Random House Mondadori, S.A. (Lumen).
- ISBN:
- 978-84-264-1714-5Copied ISBN!
A Mercy
Electronic resource
English language
Published July 15, 2008 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
- ISBN:
- 978-0-307-27044-3Copied ISBN!
A Mercy
English language
Published July 15, 2008 by Chatto & Windus.
- ISBN:
- 978-0-7011-8341-7Copied ISBN!
A mercy
English language
Published July 15, 2008 by Isis Large Print.
- ISBN:
- 978-0-7531-8482-0Copied ISBN!
A mercy
273 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2008 by Random House Large Print.
- ISBN:
- 978-0-7393-2630-5Copied ISBN!
Un don
French language
Published March 15, 2009 by Christian Bourgois éditeur.
- ISBN:
- 978-2-267-02032-8Copied ISBN!
Gnade
paperback
Published May 8, 2011 by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verla, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH.
- ISBN:
- 978-3-499-24962-4Copied ISBN!
A Mercy
E-book
English language
Published July 15, 2010 by Random House Publishing Group.
- ISBN:
- 978-1-4070-1659-7Copied ISBN!
- OCLC Number:
- 664863605
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