This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel – Deckle Edge Author: Visit Amazon's Wiley Cash Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0062088254 | Format: EPUB
This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel – Deckle Edge Description
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, February 2014: This Dark Road to Mercy is equal parts family drama, Southern Gothic thriller, and road trip novel. Actually, it's more of a chase. After the sudden death of their mother, young sisters Easter and Ruby are sent to a foster home. Their long-absent father Wade appears and takes them in the middle of the night. As Wade and his girls travel west, to a destination unknown even to Wade, the three are being tracked down by their legal guardian, an ex-cop named Brady, and an ex-con named Pruitt, who has sinister intentions for Wade. Like Cash's terrific debut A Land More Kind Than Home, Mercy wrestles with themes of redemption. The perspectives alternate between Easter, Brady, and Pruitt, each with a unique view of Wade, whose own secrets slowly unravel throughout the course of Cash's dark and delicate novel. When all three characters converge--at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, no less--we discover Wade at his most honest self: a father who turns out to be too little, too late. --Kevin Nguyen
From Booklist
When 12-year-old Easter and six-year-old Ruby’s mother dies from an overdose, the two young sisters are put into a foster home. Their father, Wade, who had given up legal rights to the girls, finds them there and kidnaps them. Suspected of also having stolen a portion of the take in a multimillion-dollar theft from the man who masterminded the heist, Wade is being pursued by a psychopathic hit man determined to retrieve the stolen money. Also in pursuit is Brady Weller, a former policeman who is the girls’ court-appointed guardian. Who will find Wade and the girls first is clearly a matter of life and death. Cash (A Land More Kind Than Home, 2012) tells his fast-moving, suspenseful story from three points of view: Easter’s, Weller’s, and the hit man Pruitt’s. Both Wade and Pruitt are former baseball players, and Cash has cleverly folded another chase into their story: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s pursuit of a new home-run record. Set in the Carolinas, Cash’s novel is a fine example of reader-pleasing southern storytelling in the mold of Ron Rash and Tom Franklin. --Michael Cart
See all Editorial Reviews
- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: William Morrow; First Edition edition (January 28, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0062088254
- ISBN-13: 978-0062088253
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Wiley's Cash's new novel THIS DARK ROAD TO MERCY has a couple of appealing motherless sisters, a really dark villain bent on revenge, a good hearted former cop recovering from his own tragedy and a bumbling father who wants a relationship with his daughters but usually seems to make the wrong choices. The novel is set in the late summer of 1998 when baseball players Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were both attempting to set a new record for hitting home runs in a single season. Baseball is a reoccurring motif in the novel. Most of the action takes place in Gastonia, North Carolina though the characters do travel to other areas as the novel progresses. The book has three narrators.
The first narrator introduced is Easter a twelve year old girl living in a social services home with her younger sister Ruby at the story's start. The girls' father Wade a former minor league baseball player had relinquished his parental rights, their mother has died of a drug overdose and their maternal grandparents are far away in Alaska. One day Wade shows up wanting a relationship with his daughters and soon afterwards he persuades them to go on the run with him.
Pruitt another former baseball player who is working as a bouncer after recently being released from prison is the next narrator. Pruitt has an extreme hatred of Wade who accidentally injured him and ended his professional ball career. When Wade steals a large amount of money from an underworld figure the cruel and ruthless Pruitt is happy to be hired to track Wade down both for the paycheck and a chance to get revenge.
The third narrator is Brady Weller a former cop whose career ended prematurely after he was involved in a tragic accident.
As usual I received this book via the grand courtesy of the publisher through a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Despite that great kindness my candid opinions follow.
The summary of this one is a bit tough because it's so many things at once. It is, in equal parts, the story of children forced to grow up before their time, dark criminal suspense and sad story of parenthood failed. As if that's not enough, there's also a thread of baseball history and doping thrown in for good measure. The narrative is done in a panoramic style as we hear in first person from the oldest child, the hero and the villain in approximately equal parts.
On the positive side, the circumspect narrative style really gives the reader a detailed look at the situation from all sides. The story has a lot to say about fatherhood and whether that title is given by right or must be earned and delves into the complex situations of parenting in an intriguing way that's not often seen in such an otherwise gritty novel. The author's female characters are charming and evoke a great deal of pity from the reader and one inwardly roots for them as they make their way through the short span of time portrayed in the book. This one touches a lot of genres at once and never fails to keep the reader guessing.
To the negative, the narrative switches can sometimes be rather jarring and confusing. The first transition comes 35 pages in and I completely missed it and had to go back and reread a few pages to figure out why the eldest daughter was suddenly sitting in a bar. Once primed to expect it things settled down but this wasn't the best executed thing about the book. Also, the female characters were very lifelike but the villain seemed rather flat and we missed his back story.
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