Mercy

by Bill Littlefield

In a neighborhood nondescript except for how often small houses are being torn down to make way for big houses, a beautiful woman too young to be widowed waits for her husband to come home from prison. Arthur Baladino is getting out courtesy of a compassionate leave program, the theory being that he's too feeble to shoot anybody else.

Next door to the Baladino home, a little boy in a baseball uniform asks his father, "What happens when you die?" It's a question the father will soon confront in a terrible and surprising way. Just down the street, a young woman is trying to figure out how to re-start her life after her husband has lost his money, hers, and their home by day-trading in their basement. Elsewhere in the neighborhood, several women and a couple of men—two of them accomplished arsonists who've sometimes been employed by Arthur Baladino—dream of what might have been if they'd been wiser, more patient, or luckier in a past long dead everywhere but in their imaginations.

On a landscape more often than not indifferent, these people seek mercy, if not in love, than in the sometimes rickety, temporary alternative connections they can find with their fellow seekers.

260 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 29, 2022

Reviews

[elena j. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mercy by Bill Littlefield is a quiet, layered novel about ordinary people standing at the edges of regret, loss, and fragile hope. Set within a single neighborhood, the book weaves together the lives of characters who are each confronting the aftermath of choices made long ago some destructive, some merely human, all carrying consequences.

What gives the novel its weight is not plot-driven drama but emotional accumulation. A recently released ex-con, a family facing sudden ruin, dreamers haunted by what might have been each thread adds to a larger meditation on how people live with failure, longing, and the need to be forgiven, even when forgiveness is never formally offered.

For readers drawn to reflective, character-centered fiction that explores moral ambiguity, longing, and the quiet ache of human connection, Mercy offers a thoughtful, gently unsettling portrait of people searching for grace in an often indifferent world.

[Jean Duffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bill Littlefield’s latest novel, Mercy, draws you right in. Vibrant conversations unfold across a neighborhood of luxury homes in suburban Anytown, USA. Chatting over coffee, walking the dog, or peering out the window, their lives are deftly entwined all the while demonstrating our universal need for forgiveness and compassion.

I have been a longtime admirer of Bill’s knack for storytelling; Mercy is a shining example.

I noted from the "About the Author" section that Bill has devoted his talents to the Emerson Prison Initiative helping incarcerated men complete college degrees. I could readily imagine those relationships informed his sensitive portrayal of some of Mercy's residents, family members, and neighbors.

[Lindsay Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well written book. I was drawn into the characters and felt like I was sitting with them as they told me about their lives (even though its clear lots of them would not have shared their thoughts/experiences). I loved that the theme of forgiveness and mercy went through the book, and connected all the different tales together. It also described being released from prison as an act of mercy. Overall I loved this book, it made me laugh out loud at times and I'd love to read another book by this author.

Please note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for providing an unbiased review.

[David Surette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bill Littlefield’s MERCY is a wonderful read, beautifully written and paced. It is set in a town where houses are being razed and replaced with new homes on steroids, a place where people live to feel safe. In the center of the story is a dying gangster, allowed to die at home due to a compassionate leave program. He probably deserved little compassion but Littlefield creates a community where folks need not only compassion but mercy because every day everywhere, even the swelling suburbs, can suddenly be a matter of life and death.