Synopses & Reviews
Believing he may have accidentally killed a friend, Sydney Henderson makes a pact with God. If God will spare the boy's life, Sydney will never again harm another human being.
In the years that follow, the self-educated, brilliant and now almost pathologically gentle Sydney holds true to his promise. Yet others in the small rural community in New Brunswick view Sydney's pacifism as an opportunity to exploit and torment the defenseless Hendersons. Tragedy strikes when a small boy dies as a result of an act of sabotage and revenge gone horribly wrong. It is a death for which Sydney is blamed. Guilty only of being different, Sydney refuses to defend himself and his family. Raised on the books his father has long collected, Sydney's son Lyle shares a deep respect for the power of words. But when he is forced to watch his family ridiculed and attacked, Lyle turns his back on God and literature, and adopts an aggressive strategy for protecting his mother, sister and brother. In the end it is Lyle who must decide what legacy his family's tragedy will hold. Amid the squalor of their lives, Sydney and Lyle demonstrate how humanity faces inhumanity, how lies and disappointments cannot and will never destroy truth or human greatness.
Written with the characteristic control, intelligence and compassion for which Richards has been widely acclaimed, Mercy Among the Children is a story set in a particular time and place, yet its message is universal.
About the Author
David Adams Richards is an award-winning author of both fiction and non-fiction. His meditation on the joys of fly-fishing, Lines on the Water, published by Doubleday Canada, won the Governor General's Award in 1998. His previous non-fiction book with Doubleday Canada, Hockey Dreams, was a national bestseller. As a novelist, Richards is best known for his Miramichi trilogy: Nights Below Station Street (1988), winner of the Governor General's Award; Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (1990), winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award; and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. His novel The Bay of Love and Sorrows, published in 1998, received widespread critical acclaim.