What's it about? From Haywire Books:
"A lonesome highway. A hit and run. A coastal town in turmoil
In the vein of Russell Banks’s The Sweet Hereafter and Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, Jon Sealy’s The Merciful explores a hit and run in a coastal South Carolina tourist town and the subsequent trial, providing both a gripping courtroom drama and a probing look at questions of justice and mercy in our era of social media, fake news, and online outrage.
When 19-year-old Samantha James is killed by a driver while riding her bike home from work one night, the town sets out to crucify the alleged culprit, Daniel Hayward. The headlines tell a compelling story, but the truth is much less clear. As in the film Rashomon, everyone has a “story” about what happened: the media, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, Daniel, and Samantha’s family.
As the book examines these myriad perspectives, The Merciful’s stunning scope ranges from characters striving for a kind of American success that’s just out of reach, to questions of data analytics, brain emulations, and the very survival of humanity. Ultimately, however, the novel is a morality play about one moment, one accident, one decision, and the way an instant can change the course of a life forever."
“Sealy keeps the narrative running smoothly throughout….A thought-provoking volume about how a wrong choice can have huge repercussions.”—Kirkus Reviews
If The Merciful sounds like a book you'd like to read, enter using the Rafflecopter below for a chance at a Kindle e-book. Ends February 4/21. Open to US only. Good luck!
I've been reading so much non-fiction this year that I have a real need to read something like this one! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds pretty good, thanks for the giveaway! I'd love to read it!
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