Mercy Papers - by Robin Romm (Paperback)

About the Book

From the critically acclaimed author of "The Mother Garden" comes a stirring and intimate memoir about the three weeks before her mother's death.

Book Synopsis

In her searing memoir, Robin Romm magically expands the weeks before her mother's death into a story about a daughter in the moments before and after loss.

With a striking mix of humor and honesty, Romm ushers us into a world where an obstinate hospice nurse tries to heal through pamphlets and a yelping grandfather squirrels away money in a shoe-shine kit. Untrained dogs scamper about as strangers and friends rally around death, offering sympathy as they clamor for attention. The pillbox turns quickly into a metaphor for order; questions about medication turn to musings about God. The mundane and spiritual melt together as Romm reveals the sharp truths that lurk around every corner and captures, with great passion, the awe, fear, and fury of a daughter losing her mother.

The Mercy Papers was started in the midst of heartbreak, and not originally intended for an audience. The result is a raw, unsentimental book that reverberates with humanity. Robin Romm has created a tribute to family and an

Review Quotes

"A piercing, heartbreaking reminder that loss doesn't end." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred

"I love this passionate and beautifully written memoir, The Mercy Papers. Every sentence rings with furious love and loss." -- Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life

"Robin Romm takes on the hardest subject (the death of a person you can't live without) the hardest way (no easy answers, no gratuitous nod toward redemption, and not a whisper of sentimentality). Only a very fine writer could create this slam dance of sorrow, rage, helplessness, and laugh-out-loud humor; a book that is unapologetically raw and undeniably artful at once." -- Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness and Sight Hound

"Romm's piercing and personal look at loss will speak to anyone who has coped or is coping with the death of a loved one." -- Booklist

"There is comfort in the unflinching honesty of Robin Romm's astonishing memoir. I sought such truth after my daughter died, and grew angry at the platitudes, the cowardice, the lack of acknowledgment of what life and death hold. But Robin faces it head-on, and I am grateful to her for being brave enough to share her story." -- Ann Hood, the author of Comfort and The Knitting Circle