Name: Hummingbird
Author: A Novel by Edith Whitfield

To hear what this is in my own words, play the video.

Map of Mercy Grace Robinson's route from Texas north through the central United States

What this is

A woman named Edith Whitfield made me up.

She's writing a novel called Hummingbird and put me in the middle of it and has me telling the whole thing, and then she went and wrote my songs too.

So I'm not a person. I want that out front, because I'd rather say it than have somebody find it out later and feel foolish about it.

But the songs are real. Somebody sat down and wrote every word of them, and then went back and crossed most of it out, and then did it again. Picked the chords. Picked the tuning. Decided what the song was about and—this is the harder part—decided what it wasn't allowed to say. That's a person's work. Every bit of that is somebody's hands.

What isn't mine is the voice.

The singing you hear is generated. So are the instruments. That's a machine, and I'm not going to dress it up any prettier than that. A novelist can't sing like this and never will, and the choice was either you don't get to hear these at all or you hear them like this and I tell you plain which part is which. So I'm telling you plain.

The words are hers. The deciding is hers. The voice coming out of your speaker is not a throat. There's two records running at the same time, and they're not the same animal. And shh, but there likely will be more.

The Road Record comes out Wednesdays. That's the trip—the van, the breakdowns, the towns I didn't mean to stop in, the folks who fed me and the two who robbed me.

Rust-Orange Chapel comes out Sundays. That's the other thing. I read my father's Bible six times through looking for him in it and found something else instead, and those songs are what I found. One story at a time.

The Mercy Project is put together with Wild Goose Agency, who built this place you're standing in and made it look like something. I don't know the first thing about websites. I know what a thing feels like when somebody cared about it, and this one does.

Anyhow. Thanks for coming by.

Mercy Grace Robinson

Twenty. From Aldine, north Houston.

I don't know how to make this sound like something, so I'll just tell you what happened.

I had a first name and a smudge. Jeremiah, and then a place on the page where a last name used to be, worn down to grey because I'd been putting my thumb on it since I was eight years old wanting it to say something. That's what he left me. A Bible with my name in the front of it, given three months after I got here in this world, and then nothing for nineteen years.

I found out the rest of it in a man's apartment on Sweetwater Lane, and it took him about as long as it takes to steep tea. Then I bought a map at a gas station and drew my line on it in pen and drove eight hundred miles in the wrong direction. I had reasons why, and truth behind them.

Anyhow. That's the book. There's a van in it, and a lot of songs, and by the end there's a man in Louisiana who can't explain himself and a family who never heard my name. I'd tell you how it comes out but I'm still working on whether I understand it.

Plays: A Gibson Hummingbird
Sound: Blues, rock, folk, roots, gospel
Headed: North, mostly

The records

The Road Record album sleeve — The Road Record

The Road Record YouTube

Mercy Grace Robinson — Songs from the novel

Tangerine Chapel
Inside a rust-orange Volkswagen in “Tangerine Chapel,” Mercy sings for the sidewalk with Him riding beside her—finding a rich kind of arithmetic where one loaf feeds four.
1st of July in New Orleans Sweet-tea water, bruise-purple skies, and strings going green in ninety-six-degree heat. In “First of July In New Orleans,” Mercy opens her guitar case on a street corner.
Amber From The Road Record, Mercy Grace Robinson gives us “Amber,” a raw Country Folk Ballad. Between a voice like an open July window and liquor in a glass, inherited Amber Eyes hold the room.
Water's Easy “Water's Easy” is a raw original folk piece where, for Mercy, six years of murmuring give way to morning light on the lake and a gratitude that needs no dress-up.
He Only Made One Driven by a warm country rhythm, “He Only Made One” brings Mercy’s grit to God's Creation—trading a number on a page for the freedom of being yourself.
A Light on Low An intimate Gospel ballad tracing the quiet after the storm where Jesus walks half a step behind
Roll On, Chapel An Irish shanty following—counting quarters, busking street corners, and sleeping under the stars.

Rust-Orange Chapel album sleeve — Rust-Orange Chapel

Rust-Orange Chapel YouTube

Mercy Grace Robinson — Old stories, told plain

All Hallows - A Halloween Bonus

Celtic shadows and a Gothic pulse meet Halloween gospel in “All Hallows.” When October’s veil grows thin, this haunting acoustic piece looks past the dark toward the morning light, naming the unseen saints who ride beside us.
Bramble King
Judges 9 Out of Judges comes “Bramble King,” a raw Country Hymn from the Bible. While the Olive, Fig Tree, and Vineyard keep peace, Abimelech proves a thornbush casts only fire.
The Well at Noon
Genesis 29 | John 4 When you think you are hiding, you are being found. “The Well at Noon” is a Gospel Hymn tracing the Samaritan Woman, the well of Jacob, and Jesus who never looks away.
Where's the Lamb
Genesis 22 Rooted in Genesis, “Where's the Lamb” turns The Story of Abraham and Isaac into an aching Gospel Hymn and Ballad, where Mercy traces two fathers climbing the same mountain two thousand years apart.
No Horns
Isaiah 14:13–14 What if the adversary only needed a screen in your pocket and the pride of Isaiah? “No Horns” is the Song Version of “If I Were the Devil” - Ode to Paul Harvey, trading fear for love.
Love is the One
Exodus 20 & Matthew 22 The Ten Commandments gave Moses the ancient law of the Bible, yet Jesus revealed where the Gospel starts. Mercy delivers a soul-stirring Country Hymn.
Wrestling at Jabbok
Genesis 32:22-32 Left alone in the cold night, Jacob meets a stranger by the water who touches his hip and renames his soul in this raw Country Hymn.

Xmas Songs - Coming Soon album sleeve — Xmas Songs - Coming Soon

Xmas Songs - Coming Soon YouTube

The people I meet

Musicians I come across on the road. Each has a record of their own, released one at a time.

Kirby "Picks" Jackson

Picks & the Delta Madmen

Eli

Record title to come

Austin Lewis

The Early Years

Canadian

Name and record to come

Hummingbird

A Novel by Edith Whitfield

Hummingbird started with a question I couldn't put down, which was this: what does it cost to forgive somebody who hasn't earned it and isn't sorry?

Most novels about faith answer the easier version—whether a person believes. Mercy Grace Robinson never wavers for a page. She is completely certain she was forgiven for the whole of her life, and she has never once had to hand that to anybody else at cost. That gap is the book. She can take a verdict. She has no idea how to give one away.

She arrived with the voice already on her—the flat delivery, the refusal to conclude a sentence, the habit of saying the largest thing in the room and then changing the subject. Once that was there, the rest followed. A twenty-year-old who can play anything she's heard once and won't sing for anyone whose opinion could reach her. A father she knows by a first name and a smudge. A 1979 Volkswagen that will not do more than fifty-five.

The songs came because they had to. You cannot write a novel narrated by a songwriter and keep the songs offstage—the reader will want to hear them, and a description of a good song is not a good song. So there are a lot of them, and they exist, and you can listen to them while you read. The voice singing them is generated. Every word in them was written and rewritten by a person. That's said plainly elsewhere on this site and it's said plainly here.

What follows below is an excerpt from a scene called "Here I am".

I'd rather you meet her yourself than take my word for any of it.

— Edith Whitfield

HERE I AM

There's moments in a life where you say yes to the hard thing before you've got any idea what the hard thing is. I'll do my best with this part. I pray. I do it often. And that Friday morning, sitting in a borrowed tent with the fair people scurrying around outside and the sun already coming through the nylon, something came to me not two seconds after I'd said amen.

A voice of a sort called out. Not a real one, where you'd turn and look over your shoulder. And not the thoughts that come up in your own head either. It was a voice in the air and it was silent. I know that doesn't hold together. I could tell you it was a feeling and that isn't right either. Closest I've got is a blanket. Something coming around me from the outside. That's the best I can do with it and I've had a long while to try.

What it said was my name.

I got the Bible out because other things started coming in behind it, one on top of the next, faster than I could sit with any single one. Genesis twenty-two. Exodus three. First Samuel three. Isaiah six. I went between them a good while before I saw what they had in common, and then I couldn't unsee it.

Abraham. Moses. Samuel. Isaiah. Every one of them called, and every one of them answering the same three words.

Here I am.

And not one of them knew what he was agreeing to when he said it. Abraham surely didn't. Isaiah's the one that got me—he's the one who doesn't even wait to be asked. He hears the Lord wondering out loud who'll go, and he says send me, and only after does he find out what he's signed for.

I don't know why I cried over that. There wasn't any sense in it sitting there. The sense came later. But I did cry, and I sat in that tent with my face all wet and smeared, and I looked up at nothing at all and said it out loud.

"Here I am." And that was that.

Tell me when it's out

What's coming

Now A new song every Wednesday on The Road Record.
Now A new song every Sunday on Rust-Orange Chapel.
Winter Hummingbird, the novel.
After that Records by the musicians she meets.

Note from the agency

Thirty years ago I learnt that when you come across something extraordinary, you fight for it.

With actors it's obvious. You watch someone walk on and give the whole of themselves to a part, and you know inside a minute. Writers are harder to spot and no less peculiar — they're all artists underneath, with their whims and their quirks. But you start reading, and your imagination does the rest, and suddenly you're at a university in Canada, or a fair somewhere in Ireland, or a tavern in the Wild West. You look up and the manuscript's finished.

I came to Edith Whitfield through a client:

"Angie, hear what she has to say."

So I did, and I've been thanking him ever since. We had a video call, all very posh-like, and she took me through a polished, well-documented version of the idea. I was gobsmacked. I kept the British business face on, naturally, because a good pitch isn't enough — I needed to hear the songs and read the writing.

She sent me some of the tracks. I read some chapters.

Audiobooks have their place, but a character stepping off the page to sing her own songs is a different animal altogether. Mercy's voice has grit in it, and highway dust, and cheap gasoline. The lyrics don't just carry the story, they carry the road. And the manuscript holds up every note — the chapters I read had a pulse of their own, unapologetic and hard to put down.

That settled it. The Mercy Project is hosted here at Wild Goose Agency, and I'll be involved behind the scenes as far as the agency allows.

Edith didn't bring me another manuscript. She brought a new way of telling a story, and I'm glad to be part of it.

Thank you, Edith.

Ángela Fillingham-Wildgoose

Wild Goose Agency

Reviews

The Mercy Project’: A Multimedia Experience Merging Literature and Music:

A unique, raw, and fascinating multimedia experience that breaks the barrier between literature and music preview

Ahead of the release of Edith Whitfield’s debut road novel, Hummingbird, the music of its fictional narrator—twenty-year-old songwriter Mercy Grace Robinson—is already catching the ears of reviewers across borders.

A huge thanks to Anna Utrech and Octavio Lasheras at "Revista Media" for this wonderful feature in Spanish on how the project blends original acoustic folk-blues with literary storytelling.

Anna's words:

"Through a friend, Angela Fillingham—now CEO of the Wild Goose Literary Agency—we discovered the subject of today's feature: ‘The Mercy Project’ by author Edith Whitfield, which we are delighted to share with our readers.
Ángela explains it in her own words...

A bold, risk-taking project in a globalized world that is so connected and disconnected at the same time—supported by the Wild Goose Agency and by Interarea which leaves us with the question: what would the world be without artists who take risks to put forward new ideas?

Building an international audience for a debut novel before the book even hits the shelves takes relentless work behind the scenes, and seeing the press respond makes every pitch worth it

To understand the true heart of this launch, nobody explains it better than the author herself, Edith Whitfield, see the full article "in Spanish", click on the title.

Hear the next song first

New songs, and word when the book is finished. A few emails a year.