Mercy

In an African country ravaged by AIDS, two women’s hunger for justice transcends their turbulent friendship in this “gorgeously written novel” (O, The Oprah Magazine).

The basis for the film Call Me Queen starring Eliane Umuhire, Denise Gough, and Dominic West 

Anna, a headstrong Italian journalist, finds herself outmatched when she meets Mercy, a nearly six-foot-tall, garishly-clad woman who insists on being her housekeeper. Anna wasn’t planning on staying in Kenya long but found it hard to escape its strange pull on her, the clash of lush beauty, violence, and heartbreaking poverty. There were stories to be told, intoxicating men to meet, and nonstop drinking . . .

Mercy makes her presence known at once, loudly and insistently giving voice to her opinions on Anna’s two current lovers and her before-noon cocktails. While bringing some sort of order to Anna’s life, Mercy—a former sex worker and moonshiner—helps pave her way into the dangerous slums of Nairobi, where AIDS has taken hold.

As Anna moves back and forth between the horrors of abject suffering and the obscene wealth of Nairobi’s privileged few, she and Mercy form an uncommon bond—one that will be tested when Mercy herself falls ill and throws a harsh light on the greed and corruption that have a stranglehold on the country and its people.

In these pages, “Mercy is clearly a metaphor for Africa itself. She’s big, colorful, full of life and can’t be ignored,” making Lara Santoro’s powerful novel “some of the most thought-provoking and moving writing you’ll ever read” (The Advocate, Baton Rouge). 

“The world is a beautiful and broken place and Lara Santoro is an amazing new voice. Mercy is a fabulous novel.” —Alice Sebold