Mercy Street

Despite Boston’s brutal winter of 2015, the work of the Mercy Street women’s health center never falters. The clients are desperate to end their unwanted pregnancies against a ticking legal calendar. Forty-three-year-old Claudia (herself born to an unwed teenage mother) has been a counselor for a decade. Her deep well of compassion and patience is at the heart of the novel and its intertwining lives—the center’s clients, with their wildly diverse circumstances; the anti-abortion protestors outside the clinic every day who become more and more threatening; Timmy, Claudia’s friend with the good weed; and Anthony, the deeply religious Catholic protestor under the thrall of the mysterious online Excelsior11, who is targeting Claudia. As the snow piles up, the danger to the clinic grows, but the work must go on.