The Miracle of Mercy Land
A Novel
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- 4,99 €
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- 4,99 €
Publisher Description
Two journalists in a small Alabama town discover a mysterious book that makes them confront the past.
If you had the power to amend choices you made in the past, would you—even if it changed everything?
Mercy Land has made some unexpected choices for a young woman in the 1930s. The sheltered daughter of a traveling preacher, she chooses to leave her rural community to move to nearby Bay City on the warm, gulf-waters of southern Alabama. There she finds a job at the local paper and spends seven years making herself indispensible to old Doc Philips, the publisher and editor. Then she gets a frantic call at dawn—it’s the biggest news story of her life, and she can’t print a word of it.
Doc has come into possession of a curious book that maps the lives of everyone in Bay City—decisions they’ve made in the past, and how those choices affect the future. Mercy and Doc are consumed by the mystery locked between the pages—Doc because he hopes to right a very old wrong, and Mercy because she wants to fulfill the book’s strange purpose. But when a mystery from Mercy’s past arrives by train, she begins to understand that she will have to make choices that will deeply affect everyone she loves—forever.
“A tremendously well-written tale. River Jordan is a truly gifted author. Highly recommended.” – Davis Bunn, best-selling author
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jordan (Saints in Limbo) writes magical realism, and the result is pure magic. The titular Mercy Land is a girl "born in a bolt of lightning on the banks of Bittersweet Creek." The talented Mercy is nudged by her Aunt Ida to leave her backwater town for the bright lights of Bay City, where she comes to work for and with Doc Philips, owner of the local paper. Doc receives a mysterious secret book that somehow narrates the lives of people in the area. From there springs the rest of the action, involving things done and not done in the past and a movie-star handsome stranger summoned to town by Doc. Jordan is an imaginative writer, developing engaging characters and strong dialog. Things get a tad heavy with allegorical meaning toward the end, but the plot trajectory helps the story's credibility. Jordan's talent raises the bar in Christian fiction.