Mercy Hill - by Hannah Thurman (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A debut family novel about four sisters growing up on the campus of the underfunded state mental hospital where their strong-willed mother serves as head of psychiatry. A richly moving story of sisterhood, loyalty, and mental health in America.

"Mercy Hill--both the place and the people who live there--will stay with you long after you put the book down." --Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls

The Cross sisters have lived their entire lives on the sprawling grounds of Mercy Hill, the embattled Raleigh mental hospital run by their formidable mother. Since childhood, JJ, Caro, Mimi, and Denise have been inculcated with their mother's mission: they'll work alongside her to protect Mercy Hill from the fate of other state hospitals across the country, which are being gutted and closed, one by one.

After an incident involving the highest-security ward, Mercy Hill faces greater scrutiny than ever, and Lisa Cross pushes each of her daughters even harder in the name of her mission. As the sisters cross into adulthood, the pressures of their isolated environment and mercurial mother set them on different--and perilous--paths. And as the battle wages on, youngest sister and narrator Denise grapples with the added responsibility that comes from being the last hope for their mother's dreams.

Set in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with Mercy Hill's fate hanging in the balance, Denise recounts the transformations that shape and destroy her family, along with the landscape of mental healthcare in the United States. With sharp insight and real humor, debut novelist Hannah Thurman captures the turmoil of growing up, the true meaning of a calling, and the indelible bonds of family.

Review Quotes

A People Best New Book
An Apple Best Book of the Month Pick

"An immersive, intelligent debut." --People

"Hannah Thurman's debut novel knocked me for a loop, and trust me, it will do the same to you. A slow burn, Mercy Hill--both the place and the people who live there--will stay with you long after you put the book down." --Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and the North Bath trilogy of Fool novels

"Mercy Hill is an absorbing, perceptive, empathetic family novel, cut through with real humor and heart. I look forward to whatever comes next from Hannah Thurman." --Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes

"Mercy Hill blew me away. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time--its expansiveness and its intimacy, its deep humanity. Hannah Thurman is a sensational storyteller; every character on these pages lives and breathes." --Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

"Thurman brings a sharp, attentive sensibility to this story of complex family dynamics, control, and the aftermath of a highly pressurized childhood . . . a compelling and assured first book, one that signals a writer with both promise and the skill to fulfill it." --Chapter 16

"Incisive . . . revealing and nuanced . . . a perceptive take on an unusual childhood." --Publishers Weekly

"Unique and utterly engrossing . . . a deeply moving and unusual tale about how the bonds of sisterhood are formed and tested.' --Apple Books Reviews

"An intense and poignant debut about four sisters burdened by their mother with an impossible mission--both politically and emotionally--and the different ways they are shaped by the same pressure. With finesse, Thurman renders a layered, extraordinary portrait of the complexity and competing "truths" of childhood--both as it is experienced, and as it is reassessed in adulthood. Readers will leave Mercy Hill pondering where history ends and our own feelings begin." --Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, author of Mutual Interest

"Mercy Hill is a tremendous debut, a beautifully written, engrossing story of family, individuality, and social purpose. Embedded in the landscape of America's crumbling mental health care system, the Cross family is a crucible powered by a shared mission, its four brilliant daughters coming of age amid the moral complexities and dangers of freedom--both for the residents of Mercy Hill and for themselves. Hannah Thurman builds a nesting doll of a novel that operates on both a societal and personal level, illuminating the thorny nature of sacrifice and altruism, what it means to genuinely care for others, and what is finally and truly worth defending." --Lauren Acampora, author of The Paper Wasp

"You might start this book for its insider's take on a complicated era of mental health in America, but you'll stay for the rough-hewn family of strong, unbending women. Thurman has given us a heart-breaking story of duty, love, rivalry and dedication, told through the voice of a singular narrator." --Kawai Strong Washburn, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of Sharks in the Time of Saviors

"Thurman's careful attention to detail and authentic characterizations contribute to her satisfying domestic-saga debut." --Booklist

"How often does a book come along with the power and magic needed to keep you reading in the Age of Distraction? Mercy Hill--the story of Denise Cross and her sisters, coming of age on the grounds of an imperiled asylum--meets and exceeds that challenge; rarely spotted in Fiction Forest, this is a creature known as the literary page-turner. Do yourself a favor and don't start reading before you've cleared your calendar. Hannah Thurman's debut is a knock-out." --Shelly Oria, author of New York 1, Tel Aviv 0

"Move over, Tolstoy. If it's true that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, then this has got to be the fiercest, funniest depiction of family unhappiness that I've encountered in a long time. A blisteringly beautiful debut that addresses the state of American medicine like a masterwork. Hannah Thurman is the realest of real deals." --David James Poissant, author of The Heaven of Animals and Lake Life

"The strength of the story is the personality of the sisters as each one grows and fails. The irony of the story is the dysfunction of the family living at a mental health hospital as the girls explore intimacy, religion, and, unfortunately, wrongdoing." --Library Journal

"A powerful glimpse into political and economic realities of providing mental health care in the recent past alongside a compassionate and complex portrait of a contemporary family confronting psychological and social realities of their own while fighting to preserve a common dream." --North Carolina Literary Review

About the Author

HANNAH THURMAN is a Brooklyn-based writer originally from Raleigh, North Carolina. She was recently named a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction. The winner of the Florida Review's 2023 Editor's Prize for Fiction, her stories have been published in The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. She has been chosen for residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. This is her first novel.