The Mercies

Product Description

After the men in an Arctic Norwegian town are wiped out, the women must survive a sinister threat in this “perfectly told” 1600s parable of “a world gone mad” (Adriana Trigiani).

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves.

Three years later, a stranger arrives on their shore. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband’s authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God, and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom’s iron rule threatening Vardø’s very existence.

Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1621 witch trials,
The Mercies is a story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.

One of the Best Books of the Year

USA Today

Good Housekeeping

Amazon.com Review

It’s 1617 and there isn’t much that is not unforgiving when it comes to the far-flung and frigid town of Vardø, Norway, including the sea that surrounds it, which swallows the majority of its male population in an epic storm while they’re out fishing. The women are forced to fend for themselves or starve, but in a world where gender roles are prescribed and biblical patriarchy reigns, starving would be more acceptable than doing the “men’s work” necessary to survive. For the few that deem this option impractical, the fact that they are able to do so with relative ease means that witchcraft must be involved! And the pious are only too willing to bite the hands that are feeding them, and cooperate with the man recruited to restore the natural order of things. It’s a good thing Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s
The Mercies is so beautifully written, it balances the brutality of what unfolds, but doesn’t blunt the impact of a cautionary tale that is surprisingly relevant for its historical setting. A page-turner that is infuriating, baleful, but full of stubborn hope, you won’t cry mercy before finishing it.
—Erin Kodicek, Amazon Book Review
Editors’ pick: Surprisingly relevant despite its historical setting, The Mercies is a page-turner that is infuriating, baleful, but full of stubborn hope.”—Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor

Review

“This chilling tale of religious persecution is served up with a feminist bite . . . . In clean, gripping sentences the author is wonderfully tuned to the ways and gestures of a seemingly taciturn people.”
―
Kirkus Reviews

“Hargrave spares the reader no gory details, whether of birth, miscarriage or the scent of a body burning at the stake.
The Mercies is among the best novels I’ve read in years. In addition to its beautiful writing, its subject matter is both enduring and timely. . . . Four hundred years after the events
The Mercies portrays, we need stories . . . to remind us of the dangers of being swept up in a maelstrom of demagogy. For such a novel to center on a cast of powerful women characters seems as appropriate to its historical context as it is to our time.”―
Emily Barton, New York Times Book Review

“Elegant and chilling . . . an absorbing account of women finding power and grace and love even under the most harrowing circumstances.”―
USA Today

”
The Mercies smolders more intensely than a pyre, whirling history’s ashes defiantly into the wind.”―
NPR.org

“Spun from real-life events, this lyrical novel charts the aftermath of a fatal storm in a 17th century Norwegian fishing village: a town almost e