A Mercy

Toni Morrison · 2008 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

In 1690s Virginia a trader takes a girl as payment for a debt from a planter in Maryland, and she grows up on a farm among a bonded Native woman, a mixed-race servant and an indentured labourer. Voices, among them the mother's, tell of the arrangement that parted them. The novel looks to the years before slavery was fixed by race.

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