Mercy: A Memoir of Medical Trauma and True Crime Obsession

by Marcia Trahan

Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. When Marcia Trahan began watching true crime television, she did so in secret. She felt ashamed by her fascination with these violent stories, and how hungrily she consumed one gruesome tale after another. Only years later did she start to connect the dots between her true crime obsession and the series of invasive medical procedures that had left her feeling victimized and violated. Can the body tell the difference between an attacker's knife and a surgeon's? This is the central question in MERCY, a question that leads Trahan to re-examine her body's reaction to lifesaving medical treatment, the childhood experiences that first made her feel unsafe in her own skin, and the true crime genre's most common tropes. Part searingly honest memoir, part incisive cultural criticism, MERCY explores the appeal of true crime and the way so many of us live our whole lives bracing for an attack.

Genres: Memoir, True Crime, Nonfiction

156 pages, Paperback

First published June 11, 2020

About the author

Marcia is the author of Mercy: A Memoir of Medical Trauma and True Crime Obsession (Barrelhouse Books, 2020). Her essays and poetry have appeared in numerous publications, including The Rumpus, CrimeReads, Catapult, the Brevity Blog, Fourth Genre, apt, Clare, Anderbo, Blood Orange Review, Connotation Press, and Kansas City Voices, "Bloodletting," a post-cancer narrative, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She works as a freelance book editor and lives in South Burlington, Vermont, with her partner, Andy, and their crazed feline companion, Bela,

Reviews

[Alison Hardtmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marcia Trahan's memoir looks at both the health scares and subsequent surgeries that defined her adult life, and her childhood as a shy, uncertain adolescent being raised in an insecure household, and how both those elements factored into her own growing fascination with true crime shows.

This memoir was what I had thought Alice Bolin's Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession would be - an attempt to examine why women are so drawn to stories of the violent deaths of other women. Trahan keeps the lens focused tightly on herself and it's in her willingness to look honestly at herself, she answers broader questions, or at least gets closer to an answer.

Trahan is a very different person than I am, although we share that same weird fascination for crime, and I was at first annoyed by what I saw as a needless paranoia on her part, but this changed into an appreciation that she would so honestly share the reasons behind her cautiousness. There's a lot packed into this slim memoir. It's published by a very small press, Barrelhouse Books, and I'm glad small presses exist to give us unusual and off-beat stories that might not be published by the big guys.

[Rebecca H.]

Marcia Trahan found herself watching true crime television shows with an obsession that made her wonder why she needed them so badly. This memoir is an account of that obsession and her exploration into a series of difficult medical encounters that left her feeling violated. After battling thyroid cancer and dangerous blood clots, she knew that doctors were there to help her and that they had saved her life, but she felt a level of anger toward them that didn’t make logical sense. The only thing that soothed her were those violent true crime shows. Trahan’s journey toward understanding how these threads connect makes for fascinating reading. Mercy is a sensitive, wise look at the unexpected ways our bodies and minds make sense of trauma.

https://bookriot.com/summer-indie-pre...

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memoirs aren't typically my bag, but as a newly minted crime junkie, this book grabbed my attention.

So this book deals with two things, basically.

1) Why crime shows are the way they are, and what they do in terms of depicting the female body and the trauma of female murder/assault victims.

2) Trahan's phobia of medical procedures, given her family history and attitudes shaped by her mother's consumption of crime content.

Trahan's searching in each subject is deep, meaningful, and interesting. She knows these connections exist inside her, but she doesn't know why. I like that Mercy isn't making an argument or some broad cultural observation, necessarily, but is instead an endeavor to understand herself, which can be the hardest thing of all.

[Irene Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The body can’t tell the difference between a surgeon and a mugger.”
This insight, discovered by Marcia Trahan as she began to overcome, with great determination, an increasingly-debilitating phobia of doctors and their interventions, pulls together a mystery she explores throughout her riveting book, Mercy.
Trahan developed an obsession with “true crime TV” after two surgeries for thyroid cancer and a terrifying experience with a dangerous clot and a defective medical device. With each medical procedure, she felt increasingly invaded, “threatened even more by the treatment than by the disease itself.”
While she and her partner had both been “anxious children growing up with alcoholic parents,” Trahan’s life was made even more terrifying by her father’s unpredictable rages and his inappropriate gaze on her developing body. While he never abused her, we get a sense of looming menace from him as well as a spooky man who hangs around the house.
She became a second-generation violence addict; her mother, beset by other addictions as well as chronic illnesses, compulsively shared with her young daughter images of grisly assaults and murders she watched and read about. As she grew up, the author had a chronic terror of being raped by an intruder; she realized it was out of proportion to what most other women feel, but that insight did nothing to assuage the fear.
With various medical traumas behind her, the author tries to take on long-deferred dental work; the terror that overwhelms her in the dentist’s chair brings on a crisis which leads to a breakthrough, as she realizes that her body had in fact endured multiple assaults, even though, she knows, “the only person who ever intentionally hurt me was me.” Her compulsive consumption of violent stories of assault and murder had been fact a kind of exposure therapy. She not only learns meditation and self-hypnosis, but begins to befriend her own unconscious (which she prefers to call by the gentler name “undermind”).
A surprising number of women fear doctors and their treatments, and Trahan’s exploration of her own story is likely to help many others unpack all the reasons for what can seem an inexplicable phobia.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think in some ways, this book is better suited for someone who is not already super familiar with true crime. When Trahan would segue into this show, or that, I did not feel like I was being introduced to something - although I did see her point.

I read this book in two sittings. The first one felt like a bit of a slog, but once Trahan was done giving us our necessary background information of her and her life; it really picked up.

Anyway, I hope her and Andy are still together.

[Nate Jordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this tightly-packed memoir, there's a lot to unravel. Trahan's power is evidenced by her ability to draw the reader into her world, into her interior landscape. It is also found in her honesty. Just as a surgeon might perform a public excision, Trahan exposes her own viscera, her personal fears and obsessions, the dark corners of her psyche, as we all observe in voyeuristic curiosity.

[Karenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir touches on so many relatable aspects of contemporary femaleness (body issues, insecurity, relationships with family and partners, mental health, physical health, fear, anger...to name a few) that it’s sure to engage most readers.

[E.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Cannot wait for this book to exist in the world.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oof. Read this in one day. There’s a visceral and propulsive force to Trahan’s writing and the way she weaves together the stories of her medical trauma, true crime obsession, and relationship.

[Jamie Beth Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked Mercy up because I'm working on a memoir with true crime elements and some medical themes. While Marcia's story is VERY different than my own, I learned a lot on a craft level and was fascinated by her story. I loved how she weaved in true crime tropes and explored and deconstructed them. I learned a lot that will help me craft my own story and was moved by Marcia's.