A mercy /

"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 plantatio...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Morrison, Toni (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: New York ; Toronto : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Edition:First edition.
Subjects:
Online Access:Author photo
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Summary:"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." --Publisher's description
Item Description:The Cushing Library/Basbanes copy contains 1 piece of ephemera.
"This is a Borzoi book"--Title page verso.
Physical Description:167 pages ; 25 cm
Awards:Nobel Prize in Literature, 1993.
ISBN:9780307264237
0307264238
9780676978308
0676978304
9780307276766
0307276767