The Merciful
by Jon Sealy
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Pub Date Jan 19 2021 | Archive Date Nov 16 2020
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Description
Jon Sealy's The Merciful is a scathing morality play that explores a cast of small-town characters surrounding a deadly hit and run in coastal South Carolina.
The low-country town of Overlook is a sleepy tourist and retirement community known for its golf courses and laid-back lifestyle. But when 19-year-old Samantha James is killed in a hit and run one night while riding her bicycle home from work, the town sets out to crucify the alleged culprit, Daniel Hayward. The headlines tell a compelling story, but the truth is much less clear. As in the film Rashomon, everyone has a "story" about what happened: the media, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, Daniel, and Samantha's family.
As the book examines these myriad perspectives, The Merciful's stunning scope ranges from characters striving for a kind of American success that's just out of reach, to questions of data analytics, brain emulations, and the very survival of humanity. Ultimately, however, the novel is a morality play that asks tough questions about the nature of justice-and mercy. What do you do when one moment, one accident, one decision changes the course of life forever?
As the novel circles around the hit and run and the subsequent trial, Jon Sealy offers both a gripping courtroom drama and a probing look at questions of justice and mercy in our era of competing narratives and online outrage.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
“Sealy keeps the narrative running smoothly throughout….A thought-provoking volume about how a wrong choice can have huge repercussions.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"Jon Sealy's The Merciful is atmospheric and filled with suspense. The suspense is not the cheap kind, though. Instead, it grows right out of the characters' lives, which I found all-absorbing. If asked what writer Sealy most resembles, I'd have to say Russell Banks. If that sounds like high praise, rest assured that's how I intend it. This is a magnificent novel."
—Steve Yarbrough, author of The Unmade World
"The Merciful freezes a moment in time and rotates it like a prism, using all facets to examine the lives of the people involved. More subtly uncomfortable than a thriller, this is a provocative novel from a strong southern voice—no two readers will come away with the same conclusion."
—Lydia Netzer, author of How to Tell Toledo From Ohio and Shine, Shine, Shine
"Jon Sealy's The Merciful is a smartly recursive thriller, its plot spiraling ever tighter around the deceptively simple crime at its center. With its multitude of perspectives, this investigation finds its facts not in the testimony of any single character, but in that of its remarkable community: this is communal guilt, communal grief, communal truth."
—Matt Bell, author of Scrapper
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781950182077 |
| PRICE | $17.95 (USD) |
