Reading Order
A Mercy Reading Order
A Mercy (2008) by Toni Morrison is her ninth novel — the shortest and arguably the most formally concentrated of her mature work, set in the late 17th century in the American colonial period before the consolidation of race-based chattel slavery as the law of the land. A merchant named Jacob Vaark acquires a young Black girl named Florens from a Portuguese slave owner as partial payment of a debt, an act that neither Jacob nor the girl's mother understands as mercy but which the mother has calculated as the best chance for her daughter's survival. The novel follows Florens, now an adolescent, on a desperate journey to find a free Black blacksmith who may be able to cure the fever killing Jacob's wife Rebekka; and it moves among multiple voices — Florens, Rebekka, the Native American servant Lina, a white indentured servant named Sorrow, and Jacob himself — to build a portrait of a colonial American world in which the categories that would define American slavery had not yet fully hardened. A Mercy is a novel about the moment before: before race became the defining category of American slavery, before the legal and cultural architecture of race-based bondage was fully in place, when the arrangements of servitude and freedom were still fluid and multiple. Morrison uses this historical window to examine how race as a category was constructed, and what it cost, and what it meant that it was constructed at all. The novel is also one of Morrison's most lyrical, and Florens's voice — semi-literate, passionate, reaching for language she has not been given — is one of the most distinctive narrators in her fiction.
Where to start
A Mercy — any Knopf or Vintage paperback. The shortest of Morrison's major novels and a good entry point for readers who want to understand her range. Beloved (1987) is the essential companion, set two centuries later in the aftermath of the slavery that A Mercy shows being constructed.
Complete A Mercy Book List
- 1Buy
A Mercy
Toni Morrison·2008·The novel — 1680s colonial America; Florens's desperate journey to find the free Black blacksmith; the moment before race-based chattel slavery consolidated as law; Morrison's most concentrated novel and one of her most lyrical. - 2Buy
Beloved
Toni Morrison·1987·Morrison's Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the essential companion; where A Mercy shows slavery being constructed in the 1680s, Beloved shows its consequences in the 1870s; together they bracket the history of American slavery from origin to aftermath. - 3Buy
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison·1977·Morrison's breakthrough novel — the companion in her fiction about African American identity and the ancestral past; the search for roots in Song of Solomon is the companion to A Mercy's portrait of the moment before those roots were severed by the legal consolidation of race-based slavery. - 4Buy
Sula
Toni Morrison·1973·Morrison's second novel — the companion in her fiction about women's voices, friendship, and community; the Bottom, Ohio community is the companion to A Mercy's colonial American community, both defined by exclusion and social hierarchy. - 5Buy
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass·1845·Douglass's autobiography — the most important primary text for understanding the slavery that A Mercy shows being constructed; where Morrison gives the pre-legal context, Douglass gives the lived experience of the institution at its height. - 6Buy
Kindred
Octavia Butler·1979·Butler's time-travel novel — a Black woman from 1976 transported back to antebellum Maryland; the companion in American fiction about the origins of race-based slavery; Butler's speculative method and Morrison's historical novel arrive at similar truths about the construction of race as a legal and social category. - 7Buy
The Known World
Edward P. Jones·2003·Jones's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Black slaveholders in Virginia — the companion in American fiction about the complexity of slavery as a system; A Mercy's portrait of the pre-race-based-slavery colonial world is the companion to Jones's portrait of the way slavery corrupted everyone it touched. - 8Buy
Washington Black
Esi Edugyan·2018·Edugyan's novel about a young Black slave on a Caribbean sugar plantation — the companion in contemporary literary fiction about the lives of enslaved people across the Atlantic world; Washington Black's adventure and wonder are the contrast to A Mercy's focused historical concentration.
A Mercy — Frequently Asked Questions
What is A Mercy about?
A Mercy is set in the 1680s in the American colonies, in a world where the categories of race-based chattel slavery had not yet fully hardened into law. Jacob Vaark, a merchant and smallholder, accepts a Black girl named Florens from a Portuguese slave owner named D'Ortega as partial payment of a debt. The girl's mother, enslaved on D'Ortega's plantation, has calculated that sending Florens with this relatively decent man is the best mercy she can offer her daughter. The novel follows Florens as an adolescent, when she is sent on a dangerous journey to find a free Black blacksmith who may be able to cure the smallpox-like fever killing Jacob's wife Rebekka. The novel also gives voice to Rebekka, to the Native American servant Lina, to a white indentured servant named Sorrow, and to Florens's mother — and through their perspectives it builds a portrait of a colonial America in which race is being constructed but has not yet fully become destiny.
What does the title A Mercy mean?
The word 'mercy' circulates through the novel in multiple and contradictory senses. The central act — Florens's mother sending her daughter away with Jacob Vaark — is an act of mercy: the mother calculates that Florens will be safer with Jacob than on D'Ortega's plantation, and the novel ends with the mother explaining, in her own voice, why she did it. But mercy is also what is withheld, and what is misunderstood: Jacob's act of 'mercy' in taking Florens is also an act that removes a daughter from her mother; the mercy offered to some characters is experienced as cruelty by others. Morrison is examining the conditions under which mercy is possible in a world organized around domination, and what limits those conditions place on love.
Why is A Mercy set in the 1680s?
Morrison sets A Mercy in the 1680s because that is the period before race-based chattel slavery fully consolidated as the legal and social architecture of American labor. In 1680s Virginia and Maryland, the distinctions between enslaved Africans, white indentured servants, and free Black workers were not as absolute as they would become by the early 18th century; race was being constructed as a legal category, but it was not yet fully in place. Morrison uses this historical window to examine the construction of race — to show what the world looked like before the categories hardened, and to ask what it meant that they were hardened at all. A Mercy is a novel about the moment before, and its historical precision is the source of its power.
What is Florens's narrative voice like?
Florens narrates her chapters in a voice that is semi-literate, passionate, and reaching for language she has not been given — she learned to read and write from a priest who has since left, and her prose reflects both that learning and its limits. Morrison gives Florens a distinctive syntax, a voice that is earnest and sometimes awkward in the way that language is when someone is using it to try to reach something they barely have words for. The contrast between Florens's voice and the more conventionally literary voices of the other narrators — Rebekka, Lina, Sorrow — is one of the formal achievements of the novel. Florens's voice is one of the most distinctive narrators in Morrison's fiction.
What should I read after A Mercy by Toni Morrison?
After A Mercy, Beloved (1987) is Morrison's most celebrated novel and the essential companion, set two centuries later in the aftermath of the slavery A Mercy shows being constructed. Song of Solomon (1977) and Sula (1973) are Morrison's other major novels. For contemporary literary fiction about slavery and the Atlantic world, Octavia Butler's Kindred, Edward P. Jones's The Known World, and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad are important companions.
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