The Mercy Step (2025)

The Mercy Step is a coming-of-age novel focusing on Mercy Hanson, the daughter of Windrush generation immigrants, from her premature birth in 1962 in Bradford through to her early teens. The book is narrated from Mercy’s perspective, starting in the womb and then in early months in hospital with ‘New Monya’. From an early age, she’s evidently a gifted and perceptive child and feels disconnected from the rest of her siblings, instead finding solace in chats on her ‘mercy step’ with her Dolly. She nonetheless feels closely tethered to her mother, a bond which is tested throughout the book by her inability to fight back against her abusive and generally unpleasant husband, Mercy’s Daddy, by her blind devotion to her religion, and by the general strains of being a struggling mother of many children. By the end of the book we find out whether she’s able to cut the cord from her mother and make her own way in life.