{"product_id":"2940169292527","title":"A Mercy: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e  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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e    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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e     \u003ci\u003eA Mercy\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e     Acts of mercy may have unforeseen consequences.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47100440346864,"sku":"2940169292527","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940169292527_p0.jpg?v=1763679045","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940169292527","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}