A Mercy

Required reading for 11th Grade English class, English 500 American Studies.

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 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, ever enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.

Paperback. Published by Vintage, 2009. 208 pages. ISBN 978-0307276766