This chapter reads Toni Morrison’s novel A Mercy (2008) as an “adaptive revision” of The Tempest (1611). In these intertextual relationships, the later work diverges in significant ways from its source. Even so, Morrison’s novel offers bracing rejoinders to The Tempest, especially in its reconfiguration of margins and center and extravagant forays into consciousness. For instance, A Mercy revisits the vanished-mother theme that features in all of Shakespeare’s late Romances, scrutinizing the lasting effects of such absences. Florens, the young slave who narrates six of the novel’s twelve sections, voices the lasting trauma of being separated from her mother. Morrison’s virtuosic narrative technique highlights the possibilities or dictates of genre, showcasing the psychological intimacy—the unfurling of rich interiorities—that so often propels novels. Accordingly, A Mercy amplifies the concept of selfhood, acknowledging humans’ embedment in the world and confirming the meaning-craving, storytelling impulses that define our species.