'A Mercy,' by Toni Morrison

“A mercy” is written by Toni Morrison, who is the author of “beloved”. A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery in early America. It is both the story of mothers and daughters and the story of a primitive America. “A Mercy” is told in turns by six characters, which was really confusing and boring, though, as pieces fall together and gain richer dimension with each narrator's telling.

The main character is Florens. She is a slave, lives and works on Jacob Vaark's rural New York farm. However, the story started with talking about her background and how her get to be a slave. In that part, the story was told in thrid people’s voice. As I was reading, I feel I was the witness to know the fate of Florens going to change. Once she got the new master alone, Lina, a Native American and fellow laborer on the Vaark farm, takes really good care of her. she was one of a handful of survivors of a smallpox plague that destroyed her tribe. During the slave time, there is no trust between people. Lina wants to build her own army, besides she really like Florens. She wish Florens could stay with her and build their own home. But once Florens grows up, she has set off from a farm, somewhere north of Virginia, to find a young blacksmith with whom she has fallen in love, and to try to obtain medicine from him for her mistress, who appears to be dying of a pox-like illness. On her journey to find Blacksmith, she struggled with her life. But the strong love faith and the freedom idea supported her walk all the way to fine him. However, the deep idea inside of a person’s mind can’t be changed. Blacksmith rather lost Florens not the little boy, only because she was a slave. Her journey is dangerous, ultimately proving to be the turning point in her life.

This story moved backward and forward in time. Everything gets clear at the end and we learned about Florens' key memory - that of a mother who offered for barter her little girl in lieu of herself and the infant boy she still nursed. All of the characters struggle to survive in the new environment filled with danger and disease. The struggle for life is animal-fierce, relentless to death, and for women and children, twice as treacherous. No trust, only fighting for living. Morrison shows the relationship between men and women in early America that often ended in female victimization during that time period.