by Jennie Robertson (Author)

Flowerboxes ain't going to cure poverty. Isla Campbell, Scottsville, Maine's New Business Liaison, thinks about her aunt's leaking roof and her own rotting clapboards and shakes her head at the meeting's agenda: new streetlamps, festivals, improvement programs that treat symptoms, not causes. To Isla, self-styled champion of the working-class, the City Council is made up of rich snobs who make life harder for normal people and she's spoiling for a fight. She was born in that hospital up on the hill; she knows this city; they ought to listen to her.

But how deep do her ideals go? Isla meets a homeless addict who reminds her of an aching personal loss; a businessman whose flouting of the law scares her and tests her allegiances; a dreamer whose tenacity in every kind of doomed pursuit seems almost unearthly. Finally, she is confronted by herself, flawed and confused, inconsistent and even at times cruel. With her career and relationships on the line, can Isla recover meaning and purpose in a world that no longer makes sense to her? What comes after remorse? Are there places too dark for mercy to go?

Mercy is a book about how hard it is to actually help people, especially as a human being who, like all of us, doesn't always get it right, who causes hurt and harm, who harbors prejudices and ambitions, selfishness and pride. It is about the value of helping one person, even imperfectly; remembering that moments matter even when the end result isn't what you hope, and that sometimes the person who has behaved monstrously turns out to be you.

Guaranteed safe checkout: