In the sweltering summer of 1974, Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to get by and keep the bill collectors at bay. Her ex-husband left her, her son overdosed on heroin after returning from Vietnam, and her teenage daughter Jules is running around with a boyfriend Mary Pat hates. One night Jules goes out with her boyfriend and a friend and never comes back home. That same night, a young Black man is found dead on the subway train tracks and no one knows what happened to him.
These two events seem unconnected at first. But as Mary Pat asks around and starts learning about what Jules was up to and where she was the last time anyone saw her, she learns they might actually be linked. Unfortunately, Mary Pat's desperate search puts her in the crosshairs of Southie's Irish mob.
Small Mercies is the story of a desperate mother trying to find her daughter and getting in trouble with the mob in the process, but it's also much more than that. Set against the tumultuous months of manifestations, constant anger, violence, anti-government sentiment, and rampant racism that marked Boston's desegregation of its public schools, this novel cuts to the heart of the problem and offers a scathing look at a how race was seen by many Southie residents
