""Ekman describes everything with an unflinching eye, from tuberculosis to the particulars of sex and birth, and the harsh beauty of the Swedish landscape.""<i>—Publishers Weekly</i>|""The story will capture you.""—Barbara Ardinger, <i>ForeWord</i>|""Sense of place is not just a combination of geography and culture, it is a synergy of the two. Swedish author Kerstin Ekman doesn't seek to describe sense of place in her novel <i>God's Mercy</i>. She does something far more difficult. Sense of place so permeates the novel it moves from being a setting to almost its own unspoken character.""—Tim Gebhart, BlogCritics.org|""The writing is gorgeously evocative of a place many of us will never see. . . . Credit is also due to translator Linda Schenck, who ably shifts this exquisite prose into English .""—Diane Leach, PopMatters.com|“<i>God's Mercy</i> is a story about outsiders. In classic works about the transformation of Sweden written by men, the hero often exclaims: `I don't want to be like them.’ Kerstin Ekman’s narrative orbits around the key phrase: `They're not really like us.’ The men say it about the women, Hillevi’s aunt says it about the poor, Hillevi says it about the Sami. It is a statement that echoes throughout the blood-drenched history of the twentieth century. They’re not like us, we don’t want them living with us, they shouldn’t live. But who do we mean by `us’?”—<i>Dagens Nyheter</i> (Sweden)