Not with any particular political strategy, the protagonists that emerged from the two story lines were a black male and a white female. The world of the white female doctoral student, floundering and confused, I could easily create, partly from recent memory. The world of an enslaved black male two hundred years ago was the work of imagination and research and compassion—like any writer, trying to see through a character’s eyes and feel what he feels.
When, early on the morning of June 18, 2015, as I was slipping down to the kitchen from my attic office, where I’d been working on final revisions of this dual-timeline Charleston novel to send to my agent, my older daughter hurtled down the stairs to tell me that “something terrible had happened in Charleston,” Emanuel AME felt like a part of my own life that had been attacked. The very date of the shooting, June 17, was the 193rd anniversary of Denmark Vesey’s 1822 slave revolt, moved up to begin at midnight of June 16, 1822 (so essentially the early morning hours of June 17), because an informant had leaked the original July 14 date.
With the rest of the world, I followed the unfolding news with horror, including that the church’s pastor, the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney, had been among the victims.
On that morning of June 18, the morning after the shooting, with tears streaming and the New York Times in one hand and my cell phone in the other, I e-mailed my agent to say I didn’t know how I could not include these events somehow in this novel. But that I’d no idea how to do that in a way that honored the victims and retained the hopeful note the novel had ended on before.
And then, over the next several days, the people of Charleston themselves provided the ending that to me is the true one: full of outrage and pain and horror but also of love and unity and jaw-dropping forgiveness and strength.
In the 1822 story line, characters based on actual historical figures include Denmark Vesey, the multilingual and charismatic leader of the planned revolt; Tom Russell, its weapon maker; Mayor James Hamilton; Governor Bennett; Colonel Drayton; Vesey’s lieutenants, including Mingo Harth, Gullah Jack, and others; Penina Moise, a Jewish hymn writer and poet; and Angelina Grimké, who is only seventeen in the novel but who would grow to become a leading abolitionist and spokeswoman for women’s rights—and early on, demonstrated an intellectual and theological inquisitiveness that led her to reject her comfortable life in a culture based on slavery. In early nineteenth-century Boston, the Haydens did run a clothing shop that distributed abolitionist propaganda by slipping pamphlets into the clothing they sold, as mentioned in the book. Dinah’s escape in the novel is based on that of Ellen Craft, who disguised herself as a wealthy Spaniard with a wounded neck and managed (along with her husband, playing the part of her slave) to reach freedom in the North.
In the 2015 story line, the majority of the protagonists are purely works of fiction. Included in the story line, however, and handled in fictional form, are those involved in the Emanuel AME shooting:
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, a minister, high school track coach, speech pathologist and mother of three; Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, a public servant, lover of books, and manager for the Charleston County Public Library’s St. Andrews Regional Branch, renamed in her honor; Susie Jackson, a grandmother of eight, church choir member and trustee; Ethel Lee Lance, matriarch of a large family and the church’s sexton who for three decades took pride in keeping sparkling clean the very room where she died; DePayne V. Middleton, an ordained minister who was the mother of four daughters and also a school administrator and admissions coordinator at a local university; Clementa Pinckney, father of two daughters and Emanuel’s pastor as well as a South Carolina state senator and the youngest African American elected to his state’s legislature; Tywanza Sanders, a recent college graduate, poet, and entrepreneur who tried to reason with the killer and died attempting to save the life of his great-aunt, Susie Jackson; Daniel Simmons, a grandfather and retired but still-practicing minister who served in Vietnam and was awarded the Purple Heart and who died attempting to save Clem Pinckney; and Myra Thompson, a mother of two and a gifted Bible study teacher and an AME minister who had renewed her pastoral license only a few hours earlier. The more I read about these individuals, beloved by their families, colleagues, and community, the harder it became to try and sketch out the tragedy in the basement of Mother Emanuel. They deserve far more than these lines to describe the breadth and depth of their lives and the many, many others they impacted. In the wake of the tragedy, their families continue their legacies of love and strength.
The survivors of the shooting, victims in their own right who must now deal with the harrowing memories of June 17, 2015, include Polly Sheppard, Felicia Sanders, and Sanders’s granddaughter, who was eleven years old at the time of the atrocity, the age of my youngest child.
I have been humbled and inspired—and am still regularly brought to tears—by how these people, together with their loved ones and the wider population of Charleston, including its police force and its longtime, marvelous former mayor Joe Riley, have set an example for our nation and for the world of a community drawing together in grief and horror after an atrocity, with renewed efforts to connect peacefully and authentically across lines of race and income and religion and to seek justice and fairness and safety for all. Out of respect and admiration, a portion of the proceeds of this novel will go to a foundation set up and administered by Mother Emanuel to serve the families of the victims.
I’m grateful to have gotten to explain at least a part of this novel’s peculiar journey. I’m a writer because stories have shaped who I am and continue to challenge and change me. In a cultural climate all too prone to shouting and insults and refusing to hear one another, and a climate in which talking about race is risky, I believe not talking about race is far more dangerous still. It’s my hope that this story of tragedy, brutality, beauty, and courage across two hundred years might be at least a small part of that conversation.
I also hope that if the reader takes anything away from spending time in the pages of this novel, it would be a sense of awe for the kind of courage that is willing, in the words of the Honorable Reverend Clem Pinckney, to “make some noise” on behalf of those whose voices aren’t being heard and a sense of hope that there is, in fact, despite all the evidence to the contrary, a way to live out a kind of love that annihilates hate and that always, in the end, gets the last word.
—Joy Jordan-Lake
Reading Group Questions for Discussion
Have you ever been to Charleston, South Carolina, and if so, what were your own impressions of the way the city approaches its history?
How much—if anything—did you know about the Denmark Vesey slave revolt of 1822 before reading this book? From what you know of him from history and through this book, what arguments can be made for his being a revolutionary for freedom along the lines of those who fought in the American Revolution just a few decades prior?
Had you ever heard of the Grimké sisters of South Carolina, and if so, what did you know? Angelina, a character in this book, and her sister Sarah were among the few Southern slaveholding women who took a public stand against slavery. What do you think made them willing to differentiate themselves from their family and the culture that had raised them? Have you had times in your life you felt called upon to stand up against the culture around you? What happened? Have there been times you wish you had spoken out but failed to?
Emily Pinckney chooses a different road from the slaveholding women who did nothing to assist suffering slaves, but also a different road from her more politically engaged friend Angelina Grimké, who would go on to become the first woman ever to address a legislative body in the United States. What do you think of Emily’s decision, and is it admirable or a cop-out?
A Tangled Mercy interweaves the stories of two different time periods and two different sets of characters. Which time period and which characters did you find more engaging? Can you talk about why? Did either of the time periods help bring to life the other fo
r you?
If you had to choose a theme for this book, how would you phrase it?
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when you first heard or read the news about the tragic shooting at Emanuel AME in Charleston? Has it blurred together with other recent tragic events for you, or has it remained distinct in your mind—and why?
In the wake of the shooting at Mother Emanuel, much has been written about forgiveness versus an understandable rage at injustice, discrimination, and violence. Do you think these things, forgiveness and unity versus a demand for justice, are properly balanced in our culture? How can we promote healthy, respectful conversations about these things among people who might disagree?
One of the family members of one of the AME victims in 2015 said candidly that she had not been able to forgive the shooter yet but that, given her faith, she knew she had to be on the road to forgiveness—that it is a process in some cases more than a moment in time. What do you have to say about the giving or receiving of forgiveness in your own life? In what instances has it been a moment in time, and when has it been a long, hard journey?
Which character in the book, historical or fictional, do you most admire and why? Which do you find most despicable and why?
What is it that enables Kate to move beyond the walls she’s set up in her life to protect herself emotionally? Based on what you know of her now, will she choose to become a professor of history or a working artist or both—or something else? When in your life have you put up these sorts of walls or faced these sorts of professional pulls in very different directions?
After the 2015 shooting in Charleston, thousands of residents and people across the globe made a point of crossing racial, economic, or other cultural lines to show they cared and wanted to help. How can that sort of spirit of unity and desire to connect be fostered on an everyday basis, not just in the wake of tragedy? If you have a place of worship, does that faith community contribute to racial justice, compassion, and unity? If it doesn’t contribute to racial justice, compassion, and unity, why not?
What practical steps might you take in your own neighborhood or workplace or through a group to which you belong to promote greater understanding, respect, admiration, and cohesion across cultural lines?
About The Author
Joy Jordan-Lake has written more than a half dozen books, including the novel Blue Hole Back Home, which won the Christy Award in 2009 for Best First Novel. The book, which explores racial violence and reconciliation in the post–Civil Rights South, went on to be chosen as the Common Book at several colleges, as well as being a frequent book club pick.
Jordan-Lake holds a PhD in English, is a former chaplain at Harvard, and has taught literature and writing at several universities. Her scholarly work Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin draws on the narratives, journals, and letters of enslaved and slaveholding antebellum women, research that led her to the story behind A Tangled Mercy. Living outside of Nashville, she and her husband have three children. To learn more about the author and her work, visit www.joyjordanlake.com.
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