Bend of Mercy

Loved it. Seriously, this is the kind of western that makes you feel dust in your mouth. The spring being cordoned off with a scarecrow gate and a smug sign — ugh, hated those men so much, job well done by the author. Tommy's small, hard grief (the boy naming an insect beside the coffin) was the kind of heartbreak that made me blink back tears. Finn's temptation to fall back into old ways and the moral question about whether violence can ever be a form of mercy kept me reading. Also, Abbey swearing out loud? Iconic. Would read a whole book about this town. 🌵

I tore through Bend of Mercy in one long, breathless sitting. The opening image of Finn coming into Red Bend under a sun that 'held its breath' stuck with me — that line set the tone for the whole book. I loved how the author uses small details to build a community: Tommy's knuckled hands on the coffin, Liza's rolled sleeves, Abbey fingering the badge like it's the only real thing she has left. The scene at the spring — the new posts, the neat iron sign, the men in better shirts — is devastating but precise. Finn's moral tug, between leaving violence behind and defending a town that needs water more than speeches, felt honest and earned. The prose is lean but expressive; moments like the cellar-scented blanket over the coffin make grief feel tactile. If you like westerns with moral weight and real people rather than caricatures, this one lands hard and true.

Bend of Mercy is quietly effective. The plot is straightforward — a spring walled off, a landowner with money, a returning man with a violent past — but the execution is what sells it. I appreciated the measured pacing through the funeral yard, the way the schoolhouse and clapboard church anchor the town as characters in their own right. Abbey and Liza are sketched with economy yet feel like living people: Abbey with the dull-coin badge, Liza keeping dust out of her hair. The book excels at atmosphere; the valley described like 'a broken bowl' is an image I kept returning to. My only quibble is that the legal subplot thuds along a little predictably, but that's almost intentional — it amplifies the urgency of Finn's choice at the water's edge. Overall a satisfying, thoughtful western about community and consequence.

Bend of Mercy is an accomplished short novel that understands the mechanics of a Western while refusing to rely solely on spectacle. The strength here is the interplay between internal and external stakes. Internally, Finn is pulled between a vow of nonviolence and a deep, almost tribal loyalty; externally, the town faces displacement from the very thing that makes frontier life possible — water. The writing is economical but never thin. A few passages stood out: the cellar-scented blanket over the coffin that conjures childhood frugality, the rockwork at the spring that reads like a punctuation mark in the landscape, and Abbey holding the badge 'like a dull coin' which subtly maps power and impotence. There are echoes of classic westerns — the courthouse, the slow law, the landowner with coin — but the author reframes them through community dynamics rather than lone-gun heroics. If I have a critique, it is minor: a couple of secondary characters could have been given slightly more texture, but the emotional core between Finn, Tommy, and the town is compelling enough to carry the book. Highly recommended for readers who like moral ambiguity and dusty, tactile prose.

Short, gritty, and honest. The funeral scene is beautifully rendered — Tommy's straight shoulders beside the coffin felt like one of the truest things in the book. The image of the spring walled with fresh posts and a sign is simple but devastating. This is a story about what binds people together when law is slow and money is loud, and it does that without melodrama. A small masterpiece of mood and moral choice.

I wanted to love Bend of Mercy more than I did. The premise is solid — water taken from a town, a returning man with a violent past — but the resolution feels telegraphed from early on. The landowner with 'men in better shirts' and the smiling lawyer read like stock antagonists, and while the legal slow-drip tension is realistic, it also slows the narrative until you can almost see the gears. Some scenes are vivid (the coffin, the scarecrow gate), but others skim the surface; Liza and Abbey are interesting but underexplored, as if the author was saving their inner lives for a sequel. The prose is competent, sometimes lovely, but the plot leans on familiar western tropes and predictable beats. Not bad, just not as surprising as the title promised.

Pretty prose, predictable plot. Look, I get it — dry sun, broken bowl valley, villainous landowner with 'coin' and a lawyer who smiles like sunset. It's all very atmospheric, but the story hits every beat I could see coming: funeral, angry townsfolk, Finn faces moral choice, big show-down. Abbey with the badge should have been a fresh angle, but the badge ends up more symbol than substance. I enjoyed the writing in places (the cellar smell over the coffin was a neat touch), but by the time the fence went up at the spring I was waiting for the inevitable showdown like an audience waiting for curtain call. If you want a comforting, familiar Western, this will do. If you crave surprises, look elsewhere.

Bend of Mercy shows clear gifts — vivid images, a palpable sense of place, and a moral center. That said, I found myself frustrated by several structural and character choices. The central conflict (community vs. landowner) is compelling but moves forward on assumption rather than complication: why does the landowner act now, precisely? The lawyer who 'smiles like a sundown' is evocative but feels like shorthand; motivations for the purchases filed out of sequence could have been more concretely sketched. Tommy is a heartbreaking presence but functionally resembles a symbolic child rather than a fully developed boy; his silence is powerful, yet I wanted more scenes showing who he was before the funeral. Abbey's badge and limited force are an intriguing detail, but her inner calculations remain mostly off-page. In short, the book does many things very well — atmosphere, economy of prose, and the core ethical dilemma — but it sometimes relies on genre shorthand where a few more grounded specifics would have made the stakes feel unavoidable rather than illustrative.