Mercy House: A Novel - Softcover

Dillon, Alena

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062914804 ISBN 13: 9780062914804

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2020

Synopsis

“A life-altering debut featuring fierce, funny, and irreverent women who battle the most powerful institution in the world. This is the book we’ve all been waiting for.”—Amy Schumer

 

 

She would stop at nothing

to protect the women under her care.

 

Inside a century-old row house in Brooklyn, renegade Sister Evelyn and her fellow nuns preside over a safe haven for the abused and abandoned. Gruff and indomitable on the surface, warm and wry underneath, little daunts Evelyn, until she receives word that Mercy House will be investigated by Bishop Hawkins, a man with whom she shares a dark history. In order to protect everything they’ve built, the nuns must conceal many of their methods, which are forbidden by the Catholic Church.

Evelyn will go to great lengths to defend all that she loves. She confronts a gang member, defies the church, challenges her own beliefs, and faces her past. She is bolstered by the other nuns and the vibrant, diverse residents of the shelter—Lucia, Mei-Li, Desiree, Esther, and Katrina—whose differences are outweighed by what unites them: they’ve all been broken by men but are determined to rebuild.

Amidst her fight, Evelyn discovers the extraordinary power of mercy and the grace it grants, not just to those who receive it, but to those strong enough to bestow it.

 

About this title

About the Author:

Alena Dillon's work has appeared in Slice Magazine, The Rumpus, and Seventh Wave, among others. She earned her MFA from Fairfield University. Mercy House is her debut novel. She lives on the north shore of Boston with her husband, son, and their black labrador, Penny.

Review:

“A life-altering debut featuring fierce, funny, and irreverent women who battle the most powerful institution in the world. This is the book we’ve all been waiting for.”
(Amy Schumer)

“In Mercy House, Alena Dillon gives us one of fiction’s more unlikely lovable heroines: elderly, dynamic Sister Evelyn, whose tale—and that of her housemates—is as unexpected as it is moving. This is a thoughtful, accomplished debut.” (Therese Ann Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of Z, A Well-Behaved Woman, and A Good Neighborhood)

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0062914804
• ISBN 13: 9780062914804
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384