The Mercy Journals

by Claudia Casper

Overview

Winner, Philip K. Dick Award for Science Fiction

This unsettling novel is set thirty years in the future, in the wake of a third world war. Runaway effects of climate change have triggered the collapse of nation/states and wiped out over a third of the global population. One of the survivors, a former soldier nicknamed Mercy, suffers from PTSD and is haunted by guilt and lingering memories of his family. His pain is eased when he meets a dancer named Ruby, a performer who breathes new life into his carefully constructed existence. But when his long-lost brother Leo arrives with news that Mercy's children have been spotted, the two brothers travel into the wilderness to look for them, only to find that the line between truth and lies is trespassed, challenging Mercy's own moral code about the things that matter amid the wreckage of war and tragedy.

Set against a sparse yet fantastical landscape, The Mercy Journals explores the parameters of personal morality and forgiveness at this watershed moment in humanity's history and evolution.

Claudia Casper's previous novels include The Reconstruction (St. Martin's Press).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551526331
Publisher:	Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date:	05/10/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Claudia Casper: Claudia Casper is the author of two previous novels, The Reconstruction (St. Martin’s) and The Continuation of Love By Other Means (Penguin). She is writing a screenplay adaptation of The Reconstruction for a 3D feature film co-production. She teaches writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Editorial Reviews

03/21/2016
It's 2047, and a third world war and climate change have left billions dead. A new global government has created a set of emergency laws to facilitate humanity's survival. Allen "Mercy" Quincy enforces new environmental standards. But Allen isn't without his demons, not the least of which is the unknown location of his two sons. He suffers from PTSD and journals as a process of "mnemectomy"—attempting to degrade unwanted memories by placing them outside of himself. But memory is a difficult thing to escape, and when Allen's selfish, self-destructive brother Leo reappears, begging him to travel north to their family's cabin on Vancouver Island, Allen is besieged by the past. The book, presented as a pair of journals uncovered in 2072, is part cautionary tale, part survival narrative. Each journal has its own feel: the first details Allen's day-to-day life and his brief affair with a dancer; the second is more introspective, with days and weeks bleeding together as Allen and Leo confront one another. Casper (The Reconstruction) employs clear, concise prose that at a steady clip, and the exploration, through one man's account, of what it means to outlive one's purpose is tightly constructed if not especially groundbreaking. Agent: Phyllis Wender, Gersh Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

From the opening paragraph I dove into the deep end of a dystopian world that was terrifying, familiar and thrilling and made me keep reading until the shocking end. The novel focuses on family and survival and love and human nature; hunger, passion, possession and murder. A masterpiece.” —Jamie Lee Curtis

“Claudia Casper’s The Mercy Journals is a book of extraordinary vision. Part Lord of the Flies, part Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands with the Devil, I came out of this book deeply touched by the characters who moved through it, but also more alert. There’s a sense of the prescient in this novel – of where we could end up if we’re not careful.” —Aislinn Hunter, author of The World Before Us

"I admire tremendously how The Mercy Journals takes current concerns — global warming, PTSD, anti-immigration policies, war — and weaves them seamlessly into a gripping and mysterious plot set in a future world that, like any excellent sci fi, is really about today." —John Colapinto, staff writer at The New Yorker

"Casper employs clear, concise prose that moves at a steady clip, and the exploration, through one man's account, of what it means to outlive one's purpose is tightly constructed." —Publishers Weekly

"Posing profound questions about compassion, values, and our capacity for life-saving change, Claudia Casper performs a remarkably incisive and sensitive variation on the dystopian theme in this suspenseful and provocative tale of sacrifice and survival." —Booklist

From the Publisher