MERCY’S CHILD

Etta Wheeler moved to Manhattan in 1873 with her husband, Charles, who had accepted a position as a journalist at The New York Daily News. Although married for nine years, the couple had no children. Etta, a devout Methodist, sought to make herself useful, and what happened next made her famous: On a missionary outing to distribute baskets to the poor of Hell’s Kitchen, she learned about a child named Mary Ellen McCormack whose adopted mother, Mary Connolly, beat her brutally; the girl’s screams could be heard daily. Etta spoke to clergy and police about Mary Ellen’s plight, but it wasn’t until she was introduced to Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, that she was able to intervene. Between Wheeler, Bergh, and attorney Elbridge T. Gerry’s work, Mary Connolly was convicted and sentenced to hard labor. Happily, Mary Ellen went to live with Etta’s sister and her family in Spencerport, near Rochester, New York. Evans, best known for The Christmas Box (1995) and its sequels, often brings ideas central to Christianity into his work, and this is no exception. Etta and Charles, along with her family and their social circle, are portrayed as good, and firm in their convictions, with only a few scenes straying into tooth-achingly sweet territory (such as when Charles prepares dinner for Etta one night, and then they embrace, deciding to “go to bed” rather than eat that dinner). On the other hand, those scenes of sweetness do help balance out the descriptions of Mary Ellen’s horrific treatment.