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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My first Toni Morrison book, I enjoyed her writing style and themes. I was listening to the audio book, which is read by Morrison (cool!), and initially I was thrown by the switch in 'voice', because I was confused how Florens could know all this background information. But I got used to it and I think now that it was a unique way of telling--it could have easily been multiple first person points of view with different voices, which is far more common. That could have been effective as well, but I liked the way this was because it was new to me, and I think Morrison did a good job still giving each character a distinctive feel and voice using a narrative.
I also found the theme of motherhood to be very interesting, as we got so many perspectives and shades from the various characters. I felt that the very end was extremely fitting, I teared up a bit. Love it when new information at the end twists how you view some/all of the story.
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