While there is no single protagonist in French Braid, the person who looms largest and has the greatest impact upon all other family members is Mercy, Robin’s wife and the mother of Alice, Lily, and David. She appears in five of the eight chapters, with vignettes and memories scanning her life from her early twenties, when she was Robin’s romantic young bride, until her surprising death on a train ride with granddaughter Candle in her late seventies. Mercy first appears as a remarkably attractive young woman, the daughter of a plumbing-supply business owner. While many young men took interest in her, she accepted the attention and finally the marriage proposal of Robin.

Though she goes through many changes, Mercy is consistently at heart an artist. Trained at an art institute as a youth, she yearned to continue studying art in Paris, living in an attic overlooking the city. This reveals a second key element of her makeup: Mercy is a dreamer who fantasizes about escaping her daily existence and slipping away to live as a mysterious, unknown figure. Readers may discern that, to a degree, she lives vicariously through the romantic adventures of teenage Lily. Mercy seems to encourage and allow Lily’s infatuations and dalliances.