Review - Works of Mercy

Sally Thomas. Works of Mercy: A Novel. Wiseblood Books, 2022.

Works of Mercy is a Catholic and a catholic novel. The capital C is because the main character, Kirsty Sain, is Roman Catholic, cleans the rectory every Monday, participates in daily Mass, and her spiritual and social life revolves around her parish. The lower-case c is because any Christian will recognize many aspects of their own faith community in this novel.  The story Kirsty Sain tells has universal appeal. Kirsty describes how God, without naming him as such, worked His mercy upon her and how, despite her efforts otherwise, she became an agent or worker of God’s mercy upon those around her. 

We first meet Kirsty as an older person. She is a childless widow of comfortable means who cleans the rectory every Monday. She is aloof, content with being alone, and has no close friends. Kirsty tells her story in the first person. The novel  begins with her initial encounters with the new, very young, inexperienced, socially awkward, introverted priest in the rectory, confessional, and Mass. The story goes outward into her bumbling friendship with the Malik family and backward in time to her origins in the Shetland Islands, the affair with her university tutor, the child that died in her womb, meeting the man that became her husband and their life together in North Carolina. 

Sally Thomas is a remarkable and subtle storyteller. Part of the charm of reading this book is observing how Kirsty is herself often oblivious to God working within and through her. Kirsty does participate in daily mass and is aware of her sinfulness and of God’s deposit of grace and forgiveness through the sacraments, but she is unaware of how she is nudged into the unfamiliar position of being a worker of mercy.  Kirsty is not a “holy” woman.  We know this because we are privy to her thoughts, perceptions, and judgments. She tells us why she says and does what she does. Yet, despite her selfishness, God works in and through her. And, despite herself, she loves and is loved. 

In the last third of the novel, two passages from First Corinthians 13 came to mind regularly. First, verse 7 “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” Kirsty does not easily accept or give love, but it is present, and it keeps growing. Verses 11-13 resonate because we witness her spiritual development.  “¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

I became aware of Sally Thomas through her and Joseph Bottom’s substack Poems Ancient and Modern( https://poemsancientandmodern.substack.com ). Ms. Thomas is a poet and explains her poetry choices lucidly. Kirsty is blessed with a lifelong affection for the English Roman Catholic Priest Robert Southwell who was arrested, tortured, and martyred for promoting the Roman Catholic faith during the Elizabethan Era.  Kirsty returns regularly to Southwell’s poetry for reflection and comfort. Ms. Thomas provides an excellent example how a literary work experienced while young is interwoven into the tapestry of a life.