Merva Sherwood

Merva Sherwood is the mother of Cleo Sherwood, the young woman whose disappearance and murder form the central mystery of the novel. She is a woman hardened by loss and by the realities of her life in a segregated Baltimore, and her guarded interactions with the white journalist Maddie Schwartz expose the racial fault lines that determine whose lives are mourned and whose are ignored. More than a grieving parent, Merva is a keeper of painful truths, a woman who watched her daughter blaze toward a destiny she could not stop, and who carries the weight of that knowledge with a mixture of resignation and bitter pride.