Arts
Synopsis When unimaginable calamities strike, Mercy Carver, a poor London woman, wonders what she has done to deserve such immeasurable suffering. It is only when she faces imminent death in the snow and ice-encrusted Virginia wilderness that she finally understands the power of destiny. After escaping from sadistic criminals, she crosses an ocean and falls in love with Jacob Stone, a plantation owner determined to fight Abraham Lincoln and his government. Mercy is passionate. She loves and hates in equal measure. Can love and hatred give her the strength she needs now to reach a Northern state and free a runaway slave, wanted for murders she committed, in order to save him? America and her people are strangled in an uncompromising political stalemate. Southern states have seceded from the Union, and a civil war is imminent. Will Jacob find Mercy before he is embroiled in a war which could see them separated forever? Can Mercy’s determination to exact revenge on the criminal who imprisoned her be realised before she is forced to make a choice between her love for a slave owner and her ambition to assist fugitive slaves? Mercy Carver: her journey is just beginning. Excerpt Mercy, dazed, bewildered, and terrified, stood in a bedraggled line with the other girls. She was afraid to move a muscle, even though her aching limbs demanded that she do so in order to free herself of painful cramps. She was terrified of being noticed or of allowing a sound to leave her mouth. Cold air was not responsible for making her teeth chatter. No, they clicked together in a song of fear. She was exhausted, sick, and trying her utmost to stand on unsteady feet. Her wrists and ankles were raw and covered in dried blood in places because of her determined efforts to free herself from the ropes that had bound her. Her face was stinging, swollen, and bruised as though she’d been punched. Her mouth was still half open due to the painful hours she’d spent gagged, and her lips were swollen to twice their normal size with several doses of chloroform. Horrific images floated through her mind, but she was not having a nightmare. She was not dreaming this. This was a conscious experience that she could neither comprehend nor associate anything with. The chloroform was still lingering in her system, but she attempted to focus her thoughts on exactly what had happened to her. She had offered to help a man who was worried about his wife. The man in question was now standing alongside another man right here in this stable. She couldn’t believe stupidity and trust had led her to this. It was an unimaginable horror. Getting tied up was not an experience she had any recollection of at all. She had woken up on the floor with back-breaking pain. Only then had she discovered her tethered body. She remembered sporadic drinks of water because of the painful procedure involved. The smelly rag that gagged her mouth had been pulled off her face and then replaced, stinging her skin. The drops of liquid poured on it had sent her into an abyss of darkness, without dreams each time. Her tongue was numb. Her mouth was so dry that it was difficult to swallow her saliva. She had no clue as to her whereabouts. Was she far from home or was home close by? No, she determined, home was not nearby. London was not that big, and they had been on the road for a long time. She had to conclude, therefore, that they were nowhere near the city or i