Mercy House
by Alena Dillon

HarperCollins | Amazon | B & N

 384 pages
William Morrow Paperbacks (February 11, 2020)

“Never underestimate the power of a group of women. Fierce, thoughtful and dramatic—this is a story of true courage.” —Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author

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.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Ever since Evelyn entered the convent fifty years ago and was required to rise with the sun, she worshipped sleep like it was a false god.

She’d never been to Rome, she’d never met the current Pontiff, and she had virtually no desire to do so. Pope Benedict XVI wore red velvet capes with ermine fur trim. He commissioned his own cologne, which Evelyn called Pope-pourri. He was chauffeured around in a Mercedes… That lavish lifestyle bore little resemblance to her experience in Bedford-Stuyvesant…

She spread her lips into a smile so artificial it insulted her cheeks.

The evangelical minister Pat Robertson said Haitians are paying for their sins with that 7.0 magnitude quake. I am terrified that he is right. Sister Evelyn came downstairs in the middle of the night and found me in the living room rewatching clips of Pat Robertson,… “Don’t you listen to that giant-eared moron. He’s equal parts hate and insanity,” she said.

Desiree’s current johns were low-income, most surviving on government subsidies. She aspired to move up the ranks and become a high-class call girl, a corporate lady of the night, from streetwalker to Wall Street. You couldn’t claim Desiree wasn’t ambitious.

“I’m like a Cadillac. This ride is built for comfort.” Desiree swiveled her hips and then took a comically large bite of her sandwich. “More like a Lincoln Town Car. Room for the whole family,” Lucia said and slapped Desiree’s backside.

My Review:

My heart was seriously bruised and battered while reading this highly evocative and stunningly crafted tale of an elderly hard-working yet disillusioned nun. She had been repeatedly sexually abused by a priest as a novice and never told anyone, now fifty years later he was the Bishop who was sent to investigate and interrogate with the singular purpose of closing down her abused women’s shelter.   Oh, the irony. And I do loves me some clever irony. This was my first exposure to the brilliant wordcraft of Alena Dillon and I was quickly caught up in her mesmerizing and powerful word voodoo and sucked into a heart-squeezing vortex that transported me to a run-down dwelling with an angel knocker on Mercy Street in Brooklyn, New York. I inhabited that residence with an oddly and uniquely compelling hodgepodge of residents, each with a troubling and heartbreaking past as well as an equally challenging present.

The storylines were gripping and taut with tension, frustration, disheartening circumstances, despair, and eye-opening revelations. I was continually struck by the quality and perceptiveness of the writing, which was staggeringly emotive, skillfully assembled, and laced with insightful observations and descriptions of the various types of pain – body, mental, emotional, and of the psyche. I grew to appreciate each of these complicated women, especially the mouthy ones. And going forward, I will never look at a can of Lysol the same way ever again.

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.

Find out more about Alena at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.