The Black Death, the first volume in the NOT WITHOUT MERCY series, is the account of a family caught in the dawn of the world's most dangerous outbreak, the Black Plague of 1348 that took the lives of over twenty-five million people, over one-third of the population of Europe. The Black Plague caused moral malaise throughout the land that grew greed, selfishness, insecurity, fear, brutality, and wickedness. It caused the fearful to become faithless, and the faithful to become fearless.The Church grappled to explain it at the same time its clergy was either dying or hiding from its parishioners for fear of contamination and death. Bristol was one of the main shipping ports in England, and the home of William Beorn, a prosperous shipbuilder. William, his wife Jillian and eldest son Michael, were forced to take drastic measures to keep the family alive. Each day was a test of faith, family, love, courage, hope and redemption. In the grim struggle people either thanked God for life, or blamed him for death, for some, it was the end, but for others, like the Beorn family, it was the beginning as they discovered that God had left them, Not Without Mercy.