"A stirring meditation on faith, grief, and the eternal human project of forgiving ourselves our sins. It grips the reader's crooked heart and doesn't let go." -- Lynn Coady, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of Hellgoing "Steeped in regret, and filled with longing, The Crooked Heart of Mercy is the poignant story of broken people trying desperately to be whole, lost somewhere between a prayer and a wish. Raw and heartfelt. Remarkable." -- Will Ferguson, Giller Prize-winning author of 419 and Road Trip Rwanda "The novel echoes with Flannery O'Connor, and Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory... The difference, however, is that Livingston's take on faith is more compassionate than O'Connor's and more lighthearted than Greene's... The Crooked Heart of Mercy is a gem." -- Washington Independent Review of Books "In The Crooked Heart of Mercy, her stellar fourth novel... Livingston immediately sets up a pressing question: can these lost souls overcome their tragedy and, if so, how? Tender, quirky, and sporadically quite comic, her answer is fruitful as well as a delight to follow." -- Vancouver Sun "Livingston avoids cliche and caricature, and is able to investigate the necessity of belief in all its forms without descending into the didactic. She has a real knack for voice, bouncing back and forth... gracefully and believably." -- The Globe and Mail "Livingston beautifully teases out the bitter humor needed to endure the long shadows of grief. These hearts heal with scar tissue." -- Kirkus Reviews "[A] nuanced exploration of grief and family loyalty, showing that a happy ending is one where getting through day after day may be the greatest success of all." -- Manhattan Book Review "From award-winning Canadian novelist Livingston, this is a beautiful and insightful paean to the human spirit and how it can heal." -- Booklist "Livingston's searing story, recovery, tenuous as it often is, is hard-earned, a glimpse, with no guarantees, of the price to be paid for renewal... full of surprises; its well-drawn characters, their close-to-the-edge dilemmas, the ways in which they seek an elusive recuperation, are sharply depicted." -- London Free Press