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.

托妮•莫里森（Toni Morrison）

美国著名女作家。1931年生于俄亥俄州，曾在兰登书屋担任高级编辑，后赴普林斯顿大学等校任教。代表作有《最蓝的眼睛》《所罗门之歌》《宠儿》《爵士乐》《爱》《恩惠》等，曾获普利策小说奖、美国书评家协会奖、美国国家图书奖等多项大奖。1993年，荣获诺贝尔文学奖。

在创作手法上，她那简洁明快的手笔具有海明威的风格，且充满诗意，情节的神秘隐暗感又近似南方作家福克纳，当然还明显地受到拉美魔幻现实主义的影响。“她的伟大与创新可与福克纳、加西亚•马尔克斯及伍尔芙相媲美，这就是她理应获得诺贝尔文学奖的原因。”哈佛大学美国黑人研究院院长如是说。