Bloodmercy

Selected by Nicole Sealey as the winner of the 2025 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, Bloodmercy is a striking debut that reimagines the tale of Cain and Abel as sisters.

Violence is a failure of communication opens this book as both omen and foreground to a familial dynamic living in the wake of exile from Eden. In I.S. Joness stunning and evocative debut collection, Cain and Abel are reimagined as sisters whose care for each other is intimate, yet fraught increasingly fraught by a smothering proximity. Their vicious rivalry for the attention of a God, negligent as a father. Parallel to this, in the wake of their bodies budding within and against the still-forming landscape, the girls must navigate the shame of Eves sin while coming into their own sexuality. Grounded in the lush, remote natural world, enclosed by firs and redwoods, Bloodmercy follows Cain and Abel through the dense geography of girlhood into young womanhood exploring power, spite, control, sex, faith, death and mans dominion over the earth. Blurring the space between the Old Testament and the modern world, the girls gaze heavenward with their enduring questions to God. As mercy means divine gift and blood is a consecration of our bonds to each other, a bloodmercy is an uncloseable wound. An innate oath between sisters that binds them together in life and death. Our assumed obligation to other no matter what it costs ourselves. A love so everlasting, it suffocates. Lyrical, lush and bursting with tender imagination, Bloodmercy marks a debut to watch.

Get Bloodmercy by at the best price and quality guaranteed only at Werezi Africa's largest book ecommerce store. The book was published by American Poetry Review and it has pages.