Toni Morrison's 9th novel A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. At its heart,
like Beloved, it is the story of a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her and
a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment. It made the New York Times Book Review list
of "10 Best Books of 2008" as chosen by the papers editors.

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 masters 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 whos spent her early years at sea; and finally the devastating voice of
Florens mother. 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.

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