Mercy

Mercy - Paperback

$17.95
$17.95
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Mercy
  • Mercy
Mercy - Paperback

Mercy - Paperback

by Joan Silber
$17.95
$17.95

Book Overview

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

A rich and nuanced story beginning with a moment of fear and abandonment that will reverberate across decades and change the course of many lives, by a beloved PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author

In the gritty East Village of 1970s New York, Ivan and his best friend, Eddie, a popular local bartender, are dabbling in drugs following a short tour of Europe. One night, as Ivan and Eddie experiment with heroin, things go horribly wrong. In a panic, Ivan rushes Eddie to a crowded local ER and, believing his friend is about to die, makes the awful choice to leave him there.

This one act of abandonment haunts Ivan his entire life. He keeps this secret from his friends and later his family, forever searching for mercy from "a remorse that never dies." Ivan's decision also ripples across time through an extended community, affecting a host of other people unknowingly connected to that night.

Following a bold cast of characters across decades, and set against the changing social and sexual mores from the 1970s onward, Mercy is Silber's most ambitious and expansive novel yet, proving once again how we are all connected in mysterious and often unknown ways.
ISBN9781640097988
Author Joan Silber
PublisherCounterpoint LLC
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedSeptember 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages256
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Family Life Fiction Historical Fiction

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About Joan Silber

Joan Silber is the author of ten books of fiction. Her first novel won the PEN/ Hemingway Award in 1981; she's also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines, and she's received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. She taught for many years at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program. She lives in Manhattan, on the Lower East Side, with her dog Jolie.

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