A Mercy

About this book

In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaakr is an Algo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh", he takes a small salve girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lima, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.