The Mercy Seat eBook: Rilla Askew: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

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Few first novels garner the kind of powerful praise awarded this epic story that takes place on the dusty, remorseless Oklahoma frontier, where two brothers are deadlocked in a furious rivalry. Fayette is an enterprising schemer hoping to cash in on his brother's talents as a gunsmith. John, determined not to repeat the crime that forced both families to flee their Kentucky homes, doggedly follows his tenacious brother west, while he watches his own family disintegrate.

Wondrously told through the wary eyes of John's ten-year-old daughter, Mattie, whose gift of premonition proves to be both a blessing and a curse, The Mercy Seat resounds with the rhythms of the Old Testament even as it explores the mysteries of the Native American spirit world. Sharing Faulkner's understanding of the inescapable pull of family and history, and Cormac McCarthy's appreciation of the stark beauty of the American wilderness, Rilla Askew imbues this momentous work with her tremendous energy and emotional range. It is an extraordinary novel from a prodigious new talent.

Strange Business, a collection of linked stories that won the 1993 Oklahoma Book Award, is available from Penguin.

About the Author

Rilla Askew is the author of Strange Business, a collection of stories, and of the novel The Mercy Seat, nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award and winner of the Western Heritage Award and the Oklahoma Book Award. She divides her time between the San Bois Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma and upstate New York.

Product details

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 745 KB
Print Length: 450 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0140265155
Publisher: Penguin Books (1 May 1998)
Language: English
ASIN: B000OCXH7C
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray: Not Enabled

Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars A captivating novel 19 Jan 2013

By Pauline Sirkett

Format:Paperback

Rilla Askew's Mercy Seat transports you effortlessly to the latter half of the 19th century frontier America. You can envision the harsh conditions that the author describes and using the language of that time to tell a story makes it even more enjoyable to read.
Two brothers whose relationship dissolves and explodes into tragedy, two families struggling against harsh winter conditions trying to flee across the Ouachita Mountains of Oklahoma, a ten year old girl who is carried across harsh countryside in a wagon witnesses the death of her mother and sibling, nearly dies,has visions and is taken under the wing of a Choctaw healer.
This is not a book where the reader hopes for a happy ending. It is full of tragedy, greed, power and destruction but told in a way that will have you captivated until end.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Too Long, Too Much Description of Surroundings 8 Feb 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

I understand this is a first time novel, and it was a good try, but this story could have been told in 250 pages, not 400. It would have been better if she spent more time in telling the story of the people, and less time describing every detail of the surroundings. The book drug on too long, too much of a good thing. I would have liked to see the character of Thula developed, and known more about what Matt thought, not just about what she did. I would not recommend this book, unless you have nothing else to read.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Potentially powerful story ruined by unschooled author. 12 Jan 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

This story of a family's trip to and their life in "Eye-tee," Indian Country, Oklahoma, has the potential to be a masterpiece. The biblical allusions are a nice touch, but weren't used very masterfully. Perhaps Rilla should have saved this powerful story for another day and time when she was a better versed author.

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5.0 out of 5 stars "The Mercy Seat" is a phenomenal accomplishment. 29 Nov 1998

By A Customer

Format: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.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing -- but not bad -- first novel 11 Nov 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Rilla Askew's first novel The Mercy Seat contains some marvelous writing, but is ultimately an uneven effort. Telling the story of ten-year-old Matti Lodi and her travels from Kentucky to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), Askew attempts to retell the Cain and Abel story, in the struggles between Mattie's father John and his older brother Lafayette (significantly nicknamed "Fate"). In the novel, Askew seems to pick up and then drop again several threads of story and character. The book, however, contains two wonderful set pieces. The first is the death of Mattie's mother and the family's arrival in Oklahoma at the home of Fate, who had forged ahead. Second is the showdown between the two brother's, resulting in Fate's demise. Askew tells and retells this same event successively from the viewpoint of several characters, each narrator adding his "take" on the events. One would think this re-telling of the same thing, which takes the final third of the novel, would wear on the reader, but Askew handles it with great aplomb and suspense. She is a very promising writer.

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

By A Customer

Format: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.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Gut Wrenching story of 10 yr. old Mattie's trip to Eye Tee. 11 Jan 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

This novel grabs you from the very first page and doesn't let go until the end. Leaves you wondering how a 10 year old girl can survive such a trip in a covered wagon to a new territory against the odds this child had to face, the heartache of her mother's death,and having to raise her brothers and sisters

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5.0 out of 5 stars This book is not merely a good read. It is an experience. 4 Jan 1998

By A Customer

Format: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.

The Mercy Seat [Kindle Edition]

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