Beautiful in its subtle simplicity, Elizabeth H. Winthrop's haunting fourth novel offers a glimpse into the Jim Crow-era American South that resonates well beyond its historical moment.
Set in rural Louisiana in the autumn of 1943, The Mercy Seat describes the hours leading up to the execution of a young black man, Will Jones, for raping a white girl. Rather than follow a conventional framework the narrative takes the form of short chapters centred around somebody directly or indirectly touched by the case, from Will himself to the son of the prosecutor and the convict responsible for transporting and installing the electric chair in which he is to be placed. The story dips into each of their lives in a series of vivid portraits that simultaneously capture the essence of their individual stories and combine to create a greater narrative that climaxes at midnight in a dramatic turn that is both terrible and miraculous and will leave everybody changed.
Winthrop chooses her words with care and nothing she writes is superfluous. Her descriptions are brief but evocative, full of small, vivid details that bring the characters to life - the prosecutor's wife carefully moving pencils one by one across the table and back again as she suggests Will is innocent, the priest who has returned home from sharing his charge's final meal sitting in darkness staring at the whisky bottle, glass and ice set out on the table before him - and sensory descriptions that transport the reader into a stultifying Southern day whose heat reflects and amplifies the simmering tensions in a divided community.
For all its brevity The Mercy Seat encompasses a great deal, from the stresses within and between families, communities, North and South at a troubled time in American history, to the anguish of a parent faced with the loss of a child. The most poignant chapters involve Will's father struggling to reach home with his son's headstone in time to say his final goodbyes, and a white gas station owner too terrified to tell his wife their son has been killed in action.
Not only are these scenes painful in their own right, they create a sense of shared humanity between the characters that only underlines the wrongness of what is to occur. Nor does Winthrop offer any easy answers. The novel ends as it begins; we depart from the characters' lives as abruptly as we entered them and much is left unresolved.
Although the final scenes leave room for hope, as readers we know that this is a fragile and probably transitory state of grace.
Although based on two real cases, the universality of its themes and the very real injustices still faced by minority communities in America and elsewhere make The Mercy Seat a powerful reminder that there is more that unites than divides us.
Cushla McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
