Published in 2008, A Mercy is Toni Morrison’s ninth novel. Morrison, both a prolific scholar and author, centers the question of slavery and a pre-racial America in this historical fiction novel. A Mercy was chosen as one of the best books in the year of its release by the New York Times. Morrison is also known for the award-winning novels The Bluest Eye (1970), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved (1987), among many others.

Plot Summary

A Mercy endeavors to explore the experiences of slaves in early America. The narrative frequently changes focus between different characters who live or work for the Vaarks. The primary protagonist is a 16-year-old enslaved girl named Florens. Florens begins the novel on the D’Ortega tobacco plantation in Virginia. There, the D’Ortegas are known for their exceptional cruelty towards their slaves. The D’Ortegas are in a great deal of debt, and the novel opens as a trader named Jacob Vaark arrives at the plantation to collect the money they owe him. Vaark is disapproving of the D’Ortegas, frowning upon their cruelty, arrogance, and political views. The D’Ortegas do not have the means to repay the debt and offer an enslaved person to Vaark instead. The two come across Florens’s mother, who offers her child up to Vaark. Florens believes that in doing so, her mother willfully abandons her; however, Florens’s mother does so to protect her, having recognized a kindness in Vaark that does not exist in the D’Ortegas. When Florens arrives at the Vaark farm in rural New York, life with Jacob and his wife Rebekka is considerably better than that on the plantation.

Two other slaves live on the farm: Lina, an Indigenous woman, and Sorrow, a young girl born from a Black mother and White father who suffers from mental health issues. The Vaarks and their slaves form a strange but functional pseudo-family unit, a phenomenon that was strange for the time. Through interchanging perspectives, Morrison skillfully weaves the personal histories of each character into the narrative. The lived experiences of the characters in the novel allow them to function together relatively seamlessly; they are almost all orphans, and all intimately familiar with abandonment. However, when Jacob Vaark falls ill and dies, a cog in the system comes loose. Fear and panic run rampant on the farm as Rebekka, too, becomes ill. A farm run entirely by women is almost unheard of, and the threat of those who might mean them harm becomes a constant thread of paranoia.

All of the slaves try their best to help Rebekka get better, but finally, Florens must go to the Blacksmith, a freed Black man whom Florens is in love with. Florens and the Blacksmith had a brief affair the last time he was on the farm, despite Lina’s best attempts to keep her away from him. Lina is distrustful of the Blacksmith, and having practically raised Florens, feels extremely protective over her. Florens is delighted to have an excuse to go and look for the Blacksmith and is more than ready to see him again. After a couple days of walking, Florens arrives at a cottage where she meets Widow Ealing and her daughter. Widow Ealing’s community is enrapt in a hunt for witches, and when the locals arrive to check Widow’s daughter and ensure that she is not a demon, they all become convinced that Florens is the devil due to the color of her skin.

The Widow’s daughter prepares food for Florens and helps her escape. She tells Florens where she can find the Blacksmith. The Blacksmith leaves to care for Rebekka, though he asks for her to stay behind and care for a young boy who has no one else to look after him. Florens worries that the Blacksmith will inevitably choose the young boy over her, and that he will decide to one day abandon her just as her mother once had. Florens becomes increasingly cruel to the boy, and when he begins to cry, she grabs his arm to silence him, breaking it. The boy faints from the pain and the Blacksmith arrives to witness it all. He is furious with her and slaps Florens, telling her to return to Rebekka since she is incapable of reason.

After Florens returns to the Vaark farm, everything changes. The two indentured servants on a neighboring farm, Willard and Scully, share an intimate and romantic relationship. They provide an outside perspective on the marked changes that have occurred in the women on the Vaark farm. Rebekka has become a religious zealot and increasingly cruel towards the slaves, and wants to sell Florens. Florens does not seem to care much about this, spending her days working and her nights in the new, empty house that Jacob had built before his death. There, Florens carves words into the wood, a letter to the Blacksmith about all that has happened. The novel ends with a peek into Florens’s mother’s mindset. Florens’s belief that her mother abandoned her was wrong all along; her mother had given her to Jacob Vaark to protect her. The final lines are a prayer of sorts, with Florens’s mother hoping that her daughter will understand and forgive her one day.