The Mercies – Audiobook Online

“The Mercies” is a historical fiction novel written by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. The story takes place in Norway in the late 1600s and is based on real-life events. The book follows a young woman named Maren who lives in a remote fishing village called Vardø. After a storm at sea kills most of the men in the village, Maren and other women are left to fend for themselves and take on the roles of their lost husbands, fathers, and brothers. Soon after, a new commissioner named Absalom Cornet arrives in Vardø with the task of rooting out any remaining practitioners of witchcraft. He accuses the women of using witchcraft to cause the storm that killed the men, and the women are subjected to harsh interrogations, torture, and executions. As the situation becomes more desperate, Maren and the other women must band together to fight for their survival, even if it means confronting their own deepest fears and desires. In the end, the women are able to find a way to resist the unjust accusations and punishments imposed on them, but not without facing devastating losses and betrayals.

The Mercies – Audiobook Online By: Kiran Millwood Hargrave

After the men in an Arctic Norwegian town are wiped out, the women must survive a sinister threat in this “perfectly told” fable of the 1600s. about “a world going crazy” (Adriana Trigiani).

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Maren Magnusdatter, 20 years old, stands on the jagged shore, watching the sea suddenly land in a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, drowned and were left on the rocks below. As the men are wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves.

Three years later, a stranger arrives on their shores. Absalom Cornet came from Scotland, where he burned the witches of the northern islands. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both enamored of her husband’s power and terrified of it. In Vardø and in Maren, Ursa saw something she had never seen before: independent women. But Absalom saw only a place untouched by God, and filled with mighty evil.

As Maren and Ursa are attracted to each other in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom’s iron rule threatening Vardø’s very existence. Inspired by the true events of the storm Vardø and the witch trials of 1621, The Mercies is a story of love, evil and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.

Totally dreamy. I have never been drawn into a story before. I can see how others describe it as ‘slow’, but I think that’s what I’m looking for. A story about longing, repression, lust, human behavior, a faraway icy island… . Sounds depressing, but that’s just what I wanted lol. The narrator blows me away! Her voice is like an angel and fits the story perfectly. I had a hard time with the names though. It took a few chapters for me to realize who was who.

I think I’ll return this within the first hour or so after listening. I am simply bored. But then it got in there and couldn’t stop. I’m not a rude person, but while necessary for the final turn of events, the final, poignant details of the “love act” are unnecessary/annoys me. All in all, I like the descriptions, the historical aspect and the narrator is great.

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