This book _A Mercy_ by Toni Morrison, was a selection of our local library's discussion group for the month of May.

Some excerpts from reviews:
=====================================================
"At the novel's heart, like _Beloved_, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter [Florens:] - a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment." ...
"Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader in 1680s United States, when the slave trade is still in its infancy. Reluctantly he takes a small slave girl [Florens:] in part payment from a plantation owner for a bad debt."
FROM: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30094...

"The ripples of this choice spread to the inhabitants of Jacob's farm, populated by women with intersecting and conflicting desires."
-From Publishers Weekly (at Amazon.com)
====================================================

Toni Morrison's style of writing isn't to my taste. At times I did appreciate a certain beauty in the way she writes, but much of the time I found this book (_A Mercy_) unengaging and difficult to follow because of the obscure style in which the story is presented.

A reader's comment at Powell's Books says "... we get to know about the events from the characters in a series of monologues ... Each of the monologues comes from a completely different character - a slave, a native American, a Dutch etc."
FROM: http://www.powells.com/biblio/hardcover:...

A review at about.com says: "A Mercy is not plot or character driven" ... [It's a:] "story about America's history of slavery and the extermination of Native Americans."
FROM: http://bestsellers.about.com/b/2009/01/1...

Reading the reviews before I read the book, helped me to understand the novel. Instead of a clear sense of the story, I was left with a lingering sense of the deep emotions which the various characters suffered. Perhaps that effect was the primary goal of the author.