The mercies
Hargrave, Kiran Millwood, 1990-2021
Book
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and 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.
Main title:
The mercies / Kiran Millwood Hargrave.
Author:
Hargrave, Kiran Millwood, 1990-, author
Work:
Imprint:
London : Picador, 2021.©2021
Collation:
341 pages : maps ; 20 cm.
ISBN:
9781529005134 (paperback)
Dewey class:
823.92
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
363631