The Mercy Journals
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Winner, Philip K. Dick Award for Science Fiction
This unsettling novel is set thirty years in the future, in the wake of a third world war. Runaway effects of climate change have triggered the collapse of nation/states and wiped out over a third of the global population. One of the survivors, a former soldier nicknamed Mercy, suffers from PTSD and is haunted by guilt and lingering memories of his family. His pain is eased when he meets a dancer named Ruby, a performer who breathes new life into his carefully constructed existence. But when his long-lost brother Leo arrives with news that Mercy's children have been spotted, the two brothers travel into the wilderness to look for them, only to find that the line between truth and lies is trespassed, challenging Mercy's own moral code about the things that matter amid the wreckage of war and tragedy.
Set against a sparse yet fantastical landscape, The Mercy Journals explores the parameters of personal morality and forgiveness at this watershed moment in humanity's history and evolution.
Claudia Casper's previous novels include The Reconstruction (St. Martin's Press).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's 2047, and a third world war and climate change have left billions dead. A new global government has created a set of emergency laws to facilitate humanity's survival. Allen "Mercy" Quincy enforces new environmental standards. But Allen isn't without his demons, not the least of which is the unknown location of his two sons. He suffers from PTSD and journals as a process of "mnemectomy" attempting to degrade unwanted memories by placing them outside of himself. But memory is a difficult thing to escape, and when Allen's selfish, self-destructive brother Leo reappears, begging him to travel north to their family's cabin on Vancouver Island, Allen is besieged by the past. The book, presented as a pair of journals uncovered in 2072, is part cautionary tale, part survival narrative. Each journal has its own feel: the first details Allen's day-to-day life and his brief affair with a dancer; the second is more introspective, with days and weeks bleeding together as Allen and Leo confront one another. Casper (The Reconstruction) employs clear, concise prose that at a steady clip, and the exploration, through one man's account, of what it means to outlive one's purpose is tightly constructed if not especially groundbreaking.
