Mercy Seat Pb [Paperback]

Rilla Askew (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 26, 1998

A retelling of the Cain and Abel bible story. Set in the mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, this novel follows a 10-year-old girl as her family treks across America to Indian territory and she struggles to hold them together through a mix of spite, loyalty and free will.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Mercy Seat is a powerful novel, rich with biblical allusions and authoritative, haunting depictions of the landscape and life of the American West in the second half of the 19th century. The story begins as a young girl, Mattie, is called from sleep to help her father prepare for her family's flight from their Kentucky home, its pie safe and its oak bed frames. Reasons for their sudden departure are only slowly revealed and never completely explained.

The center of the evolving story is the conflict between Mattie's father and his brother. John Lodi is skilled in the art of blacksmithing and gun making; Fayette Lodi is anxious to use that skill to turn a profit for himself. Although the brothers travel west together and eventually settle in the same corner of Oklahoma in the valley of the San Bois Mountains, they have no shared ideas on how to create new lives for themselves or their families. Violence eventually erupts, but it goes beyond the two brothers to infect their wives, their children, and the very land they inhabit.

It is a story that mirrors that of Cain and Abel, yet its biblical echo is only one of the features which make this multilayered, beautifully crafted novel so enjoyable. There are hints of Faulkner, too, as Askew employs his technique of using a number of voices to tell the story: there is Mattie herself, mother before her time to her younger siblings, yet refusing to mature into a woman; there is Thula Henry, Choctaw woman who both understands Mattie's gifts and tries to exorcise her demons; and Grady Dewberry, loquacious son of John's employer recalling events that marked his childhood.

This is more than just a simple repositioning of the Snopes from Mississippi to Oklahoma, however. It is a vision of the settling of America with a deep and abiding appreciation for the combustible elements that participated in it. Evangelical preachers riding their circuits, Native Americans pushed farther and farther west, former slaves freed from their masters but not from prejudice, and white men on the run from the law of the more settled East, all figure prominently. Some patience is required as the central tragedy looms, but for the most part, the novel is poignant, gripping, and even heartbreaking. --K.A. Crouch --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Eleven-year-old Mattie Lodi narrates most of this story about the utter destruction of her family, which begins in 1888 when her renegade uncle's criminal activities force the family to leave their native Kentucky for the wild, lawless Indian Territory. By the time they settle in Oklahoma, Mattie's mother and sister are dead, her brother is brain-damaged, and her father has withdrawn into impenetrable silence. Then a violent feud begins to stew between him and his brother. Mattie tries to hold her family together but eventually becomes the catalyst for the bloody climax to the feud. Askew (Strange Business, Viking 1993) also weaves Native and Christian spiritualities into the fabric of this Cain-and-Abel tale. The novel's weakness is the inconstancy in narration; Mattie's voice is so strong and true that other narrators pale in comparison, which causes confusion. The strength of the novel is Askew's rich, gritty detailing of frontier life. Recommended for historical fiction collections.?Editha Ann Wilberton, Kansas City P.L., Kan.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (November 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140277609
• ISBN-13: 978-0140277609
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,940,622 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rilla Askew was born in southeastern Oklahoma, a fifth generation descendant of southerners who settled in the Choctaw Nation in the late 1800's. Askew's roots go deep in the Sans Bois country, where her family still lives, but in 1980 she moved to New York to pursue an acting career. She soon turned to writing plays, and then fiction. She's the author of three novels and a book of stories, including her award-winning novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah. In 2009 Askew received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is not merely a good read. It is an experience., January 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Mercy Seat (Hardcover)

This is not an attempt at a review, it is comment. Being a native Oklahoman and a kind of shirt-tail historian, I have nibbled forever at the edges of that formative time in the history of Oklahoma and the making of its people, delighting in finding tidbits and hints of how it really was when my world was in the making. Rilla Askew took my hand and led me there. Gave me time to breathe the air and smell the cooking. Let me feel the rough, peeling bark of a windowless cabin's walls, put my hand on the hurt of a beautiful child in the process of being destroyed by the ambitions and defeats of the adults who make up her world.
I'm waiting for my memory of it to cool so I can read it again. Visit Mattie, Fate, John. Maybe lay a compassionate hand on their shoulder.
Reviews, comparisons, and synopses fail the book. It is not just a good read. It is an experience.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Mercy Seat" is a phenomenal accomplishment., November 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Mercy Seat (Hardcover)

Rilla Askew's fascinating novel succeeds on several levels. She tells a good story -- one that made this reader want to keep turning pages long after bedtime -- and she accurately portrays a way of life and a multi-layered society that has been ignored by most American writers. However, most impressively, she mixes biblical truths, wisdom of the ages, passion, and the creative imperative, to create a morality tale that is all her own. Askew has been compared to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, but she is unique: Like them, her talent is undeniable, and like them, she writes about forgotten groups of people, but her voice and the rhythms of her language are incomparable. Her writing is informed by the King James Bible, but the beauty and power of "The Mercy Seat" are strong enough to stand on their own merits, without comparison.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible story and especially well-told, February 1, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Boston, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mercy Seat (Hardcover)

This book is well worth your time and in fact will take you out of time and not let you back until you have finished the story. A well wrought novel that ranks with the best.