The Book of Mercy [Hardcover]

Kathleen Cambor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 1996

The Book of Mercy is the story of Edmund Mueller, a retired fireman tormented by memories of his flamboyant wife, Fanny, and her disappearance from his life years ago. Suffering from isolation, Edmund become fascinated with the art of alchemy, with the works of Paracelsus and Hermes Trismegistus, and the search for the Elixir of Life, which will enable him, he believes, to transmute base metals into gold. The cause of his obsession is a harrowing mystery plumbed by his daughter, Anne, and the resident tending him during his institutionalization.
Interwoven with Edmund’s tale of that of his daughter. Abandoned by her mother while still a baby, Anne learns to take shreds of love where she find them, from her burdened brother and distant father, then from the string of lovers she pursues. She counts on her wits and willfulness to lead her through her unexamined life. It is only when she takes up psychiatry and tries to find the heart to deal with her troubled patients that she begins to know herself and comes to understand that her life, like her father’s, has been a search for magic—a quest for the transforming power of love.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Narrated in alternate chapters by Edmund Mueller and his daughter, Anne, The Book of Mercy weaves a small web of enchanting tales. There's the story of Edmund's childhood, his marriage to a woman named Fanny who left unexpectedly after their second child, and Edmund's futile retreat into the world of magical arts. Then there's Anne, who leaves to study psychiatry, and her brother, a missionary in the Third World. They are bound together by Kathleen Cambor's elegant hand and graceful eye, and by the novel's arching themes of forgiveness and renewal.

From Publishers Weekly

The intriguing subject of a modern man's fascination with alchemy and Cambor's haiku-sharp prose distinguish her impressive first novel. This is a book about storytelling and how we use it: "Forget truth, what matters is the way it felt, the tale you tell about it," one of the characters says. The narrative alternates between the third-person perspective of institutionalized Edmund Mueller, 83, as he looks back on a life defined by loss, and the first-person viewpoint of Edmund's 42-year-old daughter, Anne, a psychiatrist and single mother. Edmund's tale revolves around his melodramatic, irresponsible and increasingly mentally ill wife, who deserted him while Anne and her brother were small children. Shortly thereafter, Edmund, a Pittsburgh fireman, displaced his fascination with the transformative powers of fire to the study of alchemy. Cambor offers a serious treatment of the medieval art as Edmund learns of alchemy's laws and of its claim of the transmutability of any object or element (including of the dead into the living). Meanwhile, Anne relates her own life story: "Alchemy, God, psychiatry. Extreme attempts to fill the void," she muses. Yet loss keeps intruding: her brother Paul runs away to enter a seminary; her lover decamps, though she is pregnant. Anne's discovery, near the end, of the secret behind her father's obsession with alchemy adds a deeper note of poignancy. Cambor is a sensitive and imaginative writer. Readers will be seduced by her story of love, loss and redemption, and by the power of her prose.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 261 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (June 26, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374115508
• ISBN-13: 978-0374115500
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,757,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A STORY MOVING ON MANY LEVELS, September 6, 2001

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Mercy (Hardcover)

Kathleen Cambor has produced a first novel of astonishing depth, feeling and insight. This is a story that draws the reader inexorably but gently into the lives of a father, daughter, and son, all coming to understand with the passage of time what they have lost -- and struggling to find a way to reclaim it.

What they have lost seems to be love and direction. They feel it at first as an empty ache within themselves, and their paths to understanding it are varied. Their pain -- as a family and as individuals growing into their lives apart -- is conveyed very skillfully by Cambor's writing abilities. Her characters are alive -- they each have the usual complement of good and bad attributes. As their joys and sorrows are placed before us, we can feel them as well -- and we care about them, for they could easily be any one of us.

As one of the main characters, Anne, works diligently toward finding her place in life -- becoming, eventually, a psychiatrist -- she discovers at one point how important it is to listen to her patients. It would seem to be an obvious point, but it is one that so many people today take for granted or ignore. The key to any successful relationship -- familial, romantic, professional -- is communication. It opens the door to understanding, to respect, to caring, to humanity itself. Each of the family members -- and some of the other characters as well -- comes to this revelation in their own way and in their own time. Some of them hit upon it in time to change their lives for the better, some do not. Some wounds that heal also leave scars.

There are many emotions at play in this novel -- but Cambor never allows it to be carried by emotions alone. She utilizes a twin narrator technique to good advantage and effect. Portions of the story are told from the point of view of the father, Edmund Mueller, a retired firefighter struggling to find meaning in his life, battling the nagging question in his later years of what he could have done to hold his family together. Other parts are told by his daughter Anne -- the love for her family that she tries to suppress, then reclaim; her own search for meaning and fulfillment in her life. Her brother Paul, a missionary serving in far-flung third-world cultures, has his own internal battles to fight.

Cambor handles all of these characters and points of view with respect and ease -- the novel is intelligently constructed and written, enlightening as well as entertaining. This is one of the best books I've read this year.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very captivating characters, August 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Book of Mercy (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed the character of Edmund Mueller. The author portrays well his slow descent from a man with purpose to a man without a rudder. A wonderful story of redemption and a family coming together again

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, entertaining, introspective., September 18, 2007

By 

Emma K. Tsai (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Mercy (Paperback)

I really enjoyed this book. The characters are all deeply interwoven and quite developed and it was a fascinating read. I definitely recommend it.