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    The Mercy Seat
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    The Mercy Seat
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    The Mercy Seat
    Ebook270 pages5 hours

    The Mercy Seat

    By Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “One of the finest writers of her generation” (Brad Watson), and author of three previously acclaimed novels, Elizabeth H. Winthrop delivers a brave new book that will launch her distinguished career anew. An incisive, meticulously crafted portrait of race, racism, and injustice in the Jim Crow era South that is as intimate and tense as a stage drama, The Mercy Seat is a stunning account of one town’s foundering over a trauma in their midst.

    On the eve of his execution, eighteen year old Willie Jones sits in his cell in New Iberia awaiting his end. Across the state, a truck driven by a convict and his keeper carries the executioner’s chair closer. On a nearby highway, Willie’s father Frank lugs a gravestone on the back of his fading, old mule. In his office the DA who prosecuted Willie reckons with his sentencing, while at their gas station at the crossroads outside of town, married couple Ora and Dale grapple with their grief and their secrets.

    As various members of the township consider and reflect on what Willie’s execution means, an intricately layered and complex portrait of a Jim Crow era Southern community emerges.  Moving from voice to voice, Winthrop elegantly brings to stark light the story of a town, its people, and its injustices. The Mercy Seat is a brutally incisive and tender novel from one of our most acute literary observers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrove Press
    Release dateMay 8, 2018
    ISBN9780802165688
    Unavailable
    The Mercy Seat

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    Reviews for The Mercy Seat

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      (Copy via Netgalley for review)Impressive fiction set on the night before a man is hung for "raping" a white woman in the 1940s South. Through the perspectives of different opponents to the killing, the author builds a picture of characters who feel trapped, from the "trusty" brought from the local jail to work the Chair to the wife of the prosecutor.Recommended
    • 4/5
      Inspired by true events, this is the story of Willie, an eighteen years old black male, who sits in jail awaiting his punishment. It is 1943 in Louisiana, and whites have all the power, and there are some who will do anything to make sure his sentence of death is given and carried out. He is charged and convicted of raping a white girl, his sentence death by electric chair. But the real question is, was it actually rape?Nine people close to Willie, the sentence or the execution will share their stories, and through these stories we piece together the real truth, and the sequence of events. We hear from Willie himself, his regrets, his fears as he approaches the day of his mandated death. The prose is clear and precise, the story emotionally enough as shared. There were three that resonated for me the most. The preacher who suffers from a crisis of faith, his helplessness at being unable to prevent Willie's death. Ora, a mother of a son who is fighting in the war, but who is kind to two young black boys. Unknown through most of the novel, her own life will change, but not before she is called on to provide and integral service. It is Willie's father though and the tenderness in which his story is told that really effected me. His determination to provide for his son the only way he is able, his last quest, that I found heartbreaking. The ending takes an unexpected detour in an unusual way, but it was very fitting and unusual. Another good book about the abuse of power and society's cruelness in the face of prejudice and racial bias.ARC from Netgalley.
    • 5/5
      Phenomenal writing. Each chapter's narrative seamlessly slips into the next, drawing the reader into the story more and more. This book looks at the unjust death penalty and the emotional impact it has on people. The ending is not what I expected which I appreciate in a novel. Winthrop's 240 pages are each masterfully crafted.
    • 5/5
      I'm not sure if this novel would be considered 'problematic' - I can imagine some people taking issue with a young white author from New York writing about the execution of a black man in 1940s Louisiana - but only in the way that To Kill A Mockingbird covers the same themes. In fact, I found Elizabeth Winthrop's story to be a darker version of Harper Lee's classic, told through the eyes of a whole community.Based on the real life convictions and executions of two black men named Willie, The Mercy Seat follows the final days of Willie Jones, found guilty of raping his white girlfriend, who subsequently killed herself. From the slow progress of the electric chair to the courthouse to the surprising and disturbing execution, a troubled cross-section of the local town tell the story between them, from the District Attorney and his family, Willie's broken father, and the couple who run a gas station on the route into town. I was completely drawn in, but by the characters rather than the looming death of an innocent young man. The parallels with Mockingbird are actually quite striking, from Gabe the young son of the DA who gets caught up with the rednecks who want to administer their own brand of 'justice', to the crime Willie is accused of. I was just starting to think that Winthrop was also skirting the brutal reality of the times when she followed up one surprising twist with a vicious act that shocked me.Slow, meandering storytelling, with credible and sympathetic characters and a few sharp shocks. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      "Surely, he thinks, in a world where such a thing as this exists, surely there can be no God." Father Hannigan in The Mercy SeatThe Mercy Seat by Elizabeth H. Winthrop is a brilliant and heart-wrenching novel. Historical Fiction set in the Jim Crow South, the book addresses relevant issues of complicity in injustice and the pressures that maintain the status quo.The story is told through the viewpoints of fathers and sons, husbands and wives, black and white, lawman and criminal, revealing who is truly innocent and who is guilty.On a brutally hot day, a young black man awaits midnight. He has an appointment with the electric chair.Will was found guilty of the rape and murder of a young white woman. Will's memories flash back on a loving moment they shared, and the fear that made him run away when discovered.Will's father Frank knows his worn out mule is not up to the task, but he is determined to deliver his only son's tombstone to the cemetery.Ora and Dale have a son Guadalcanal. They haven't heard from him for weeks. Dale has hidden the telegram. A Northerner, Ora has never adjusted to the Jim Crow South. Behind Dale's back, she secrets candy to the young boys working in the field behind their store.Lane is a prison trusty who is helping to deliver the electric chair. He is halfway through his sentence, having killed a man during a robbery. Sometimes, he says, working ain't enough. Especially when an accident left his father crippled. The captain in charge drinks his way along the road trip.Father Hannigan is filled with doubt, finding New Iberia more foreign than his Madagascar mission. His job is to console the grieving but he has no words of hope.The lawyer Polly dreads the coming of midnight, for he must witness the execution. Since boyhood, he has been haunted by the postcard of a lynching his father had given him. His wife Nell does not understand how Polly gave Will the death sentence. He keeps secret the threats he received. Their boy Gabe decides to witness the execution, hitching a ride with the family of the murdered girl."...he wonders if it really matters in the end what kind of justice it is--mob or legal--when the end result is death."During the course of the day, these people question their complicity in evil, make connections, and make enemies. Some find mercy, others are dealt justice; some get away with murder. This book has haunted me. I want to talk about it and dissect it. I think it would make a great book club pick.I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.