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Mercies
352 pages
A chilling, atmospheric tale of female resilience and forbidden love blooming in the shadow of religious zealotry.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like standing on a freezing, wind-battered cliff edge, waiting for a storm to break. It is a deeply atmospheric, dread-soaked experience that immerses you in the harsh, sensory realities of a 17th-century Norwegian fishing village. The narrative moves at a steady, deliberate pace, allowing the profound communal grief of the women to slowly transform into a fragile, defiant independence. As a tender, forbidden romance blooms in the icy dark, the claustrophobia of encroaching religious fanaticism tightens like a noose. The prose is visceral and lyrical, smelling of salt, blood, and woodsmoke. It will thoroughly captivate readers who crave dark, feminist historical fiction where the warmth of female solidarity stands in stark contrast to the chilling cruelty of patriarchal power.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- frigid
- claustrophobic
- tender
- Tone
- somber
- intimate
- urgent
- feminist
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- female solidarity and survival · religious fanaticism · forbidden love · the weaponization of grief · patriarchal violence
- The writing
- Visceral and lyrical, grounding the reader in the biting cold, salt spray, and blood of the Norwegian coast.
- The arc
- Moves from a collective, numbing grief into a fragile, defiant awakening, before plunging into the terrifying inevitability of persecution.
- Who it's for
- Fans of dark, atmospheric historical fiction who appreciate feminist retellings, slow-building dread, and tender sapphic romances set against unforgiving landscapes.
Content notes
- witch trials and executions
- misogyny and sexism
- domestic abuse
- grief and mass death
- animal butchering
About the book
When the women take over, is it sorcery or power?
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the skies break into a sudden and reckless storm. All forty of the village’s men were at sea, including Maren’s father and brother, and all forty are drowned in the otherworldly disaster.
For the women left behind, survival means defying the strict rules of the island. They fish, hunt, and butcher reindeer—which they never did while the men were alive. But the foundation of this new feminine frontier begins to crack with the arrival of Absalom Cornet, a man sent from Scotland to root out alleged witchcraft. Cornet brings with him the threat of danger—and a pretty, young Norwegian wife named Ursa.
As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.
Description from Open Library.
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