Book Review: Mercy’s View: Blackout
Mercy’s View: Blackout, J.J. Maze, Nonipeek Press, April 27, 2025, print, 306.
Reviewed by Katherine Tozer.
Mercy’s View: Blackout tells the coming-of-age story of Heather Jacobs, who goes by Jade J. Maze today. It is a deeply personal memoir, told with the immediacy and intimacy of a diary after she ran away from home in Ventura, California, as a 15-year-old in the early 1980s (Maze’s prequel, Walk Until Sunrise, may offer helpful insight into the runaway backstory, of Heather fleeing a mother with whom she felt unsafe).
When Heather returned, her mother kept a closer eye on her, sent her to therapy, and tried to get her back into high school. However, Heather slipped away by becoming a live-in nanny for a family nearby.
When that stint ended, Heather manipulated her mother into moving her to Minneapolis, by pretending she had gotten into college there.
In Minneapolis, Heather adjusted to life as an independent adult. She worked at a Chinese restaurant, fell in with a group of partygoers, and took advantage of her proximity to a community music center that let her practice and engage with students and teachers for free. Her recollection of one evening during these early days of independence demonstrates her carefree but haunted mental state:
These were fun times. Jim allowed the stragglers to smoke. While I didn’t smoke, I really enjoyed the secondhand smoke. It put me in a kind of dream state. I wasn’t sure why. It took me elsewhere to a time when the smell of smoke was a heavenly retreat, but I couldn’t find the past. It was still buried deep.
She was remarkably vulnerable during the period chronicled in this memoir, suffering from a mysteriously contracted STD, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, insomnia, and a “bisected personality.” It’s little wonder the chapters come in punchy, kaleidoscopic, sometimes achronological flashes. Heather oscillates between several substandard housing situations, romantic partners, and states of wellness in these pages.
Though Heather started out with no savings, education, or job history, she managed to build relationships with people in Minneapolis and pursue her passion: singing. She joined several bands, traveling to Europe on a tour with one of them, and eventually moved back to California to prioritize music as a career.
