New York Times Best Books of 2008
FICTION: A MERCY, Toni Morrison -- The fate of a slave child abandoned by her mother animates this novel -- part Faulknerian puzzle, part dream-song -- about orphaned women who form an eccentric household in late-17th-century America. Morrison's farmers and rum traders, masters and slaves, indentured whites and captive Native Americans live side by side, often in violent conflict, in a lawless American Eden that is both a haven and a prison. Barnes & Noble
