The choices we make with the thought of mercy can often hold hidden results. We can never know what repercussions will develop and can only hope that all will be for the best. The human need to make merciful decisions and at the same time crave mercy is a basic desire most readers will be able to relate to in "A Mercy."

From the Nobel Prize-winning author of "Beloved" comes a poetic tale of the New World's dominion over American Indians, indentured servants, women and slaves. Who they were as people was intimately and fundamentally dependent on the circumstances in which they lived and the decisions that were made for them, as well as sporadic acts of mercy that were bestowed.

When a slave at a plantation in Maryland offers up her daughter, Florens, to Jacob Vaark, a Northern farmer, as partial payment of a debt her owner owes, she sets in motion what she feels is a better situation for her daughter: to live with a man who sees her as a child not a bit of money.

What this instills in Florens, though, is a deep desire to be wanted, by anyone. She first attaches herself to the farmer's slave, Lina, an American Indian woman, and later to a blacksmith, a free black man who works for the family. It is a desperate longing that Florens deals with, one that will control her actions and her mind.

Jacob Vaark is a farmer who desires more. His third house is one he'll never live in and will serve as haunting grounds to at least one soul. The women who depend upon him face grave danger. His wife, Rebekka, is ill-fitting with the church community, somewhat bitter over the death of her children, one by one, and finally has to deal with her own illness.

Lina, afraid that her mistress will pass on, would be in danger, not belonging to anyone, and separated from her people. And Sorrow, a strange young woman who had been surviving on a wrecked ship, having never placed foot upon soil, knew little of life beyond the waves until Jacob's mercy brought her to his farm.

Florens, Sorrow, Rebekka and Lina are four women, lives entwined, telling their tales in their own voices. Will they survive each other? Can they survive at all?

Toni Morrison sheds light on the way we were in the 1680s and how life in those times affected the soul. It is a portrait of vivid imagery, a necessary telling and a deeply provoking read.

Was it well-done? It's a Toni Morrison book ... of course.