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Have you ever felt like you've fallen into a story because the descriptions and characters awaken your senses and take you to another place and time? Sandra Dallas's NEW MERCIES provides this experience for the reader.
Set in 1933 in Natchez, Mississippi, the story begins as Nora Bondurant pulls up in a cab to view Avoca, her family's grand old house. Nora has recently learned that she inherited Avoca. The cab driver believes the house is haunted with ghosts and alive with the goats that her aunt had raised there. As she walks into the house, Nora meets the caretaker, Ezra.
Nora isn't sure whether or not to believe the cab driver's stories because her father's family was unknown to her and her mother. Added to the mystery of her father's background, Nora's aunt, Amalia Bondurant, was murdered, and the neighbor who shot her committed suicide. Their bodies were found together at Avoca.
As she acquaints herself with the town of Natchez, Nora learns more about her newfound family and the society in which her aunt had played a role. The town and its inhabitants begin to have their own appeal for the independent Northerner. Will Nora sell Avoca? Will she stay and become part of this Southern community?
She questions why her aunt was murdered. And why did the murderer commit suicide? Are there family and community secrets surrounding her aunt that led to these acts? Nora learns that Amalia Bondurant lived the life of a Southern debutante, and yet Amalia supported herself and the caretakers, Ezra and Aunt Polly, by raising goats and selling their milk. How had she managed to survive all those years? She was beautiful and well-loved, yet she had broken her engagement to the man who later murdered her. Why was the engagement broken? And what desperate act drove her former fiancée to end both of their lives?
Nora's life in Denver, Colorado has had its share of misfortunes too. She is well regarded in Denver society even though her marriage ended in divorce, and her ex-husband was killed in an airplane crash. Nora also discovers that her aunt knew all about her, including her marriage and divorce. With the help of Ezra, Aunt Polly and her aunt's friends, Nora solves the mystery of Amalia's life. In the process, the sorrows in Nora's life take on a different perspective.
Sandra Dallas is a gifted writer who can make history come alive through her characters and their circumstances. She shows us how women lived during a different time and how society's conventions limited them and yet made them fiercely independent. Known for her twists and turns in her previous stories, Dallas has delivered again.
--- Reviewed by Jennifer McCord (jenamccord@earthlink.net)
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