This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel Author: Wiley Cash | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DB2YN9I | Format: PDF
This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel Description
The critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller A Land More Kind Than Home—hailed as "a powerfully moving debut that reads as if Cormac McCarthy decided to rewrite Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird" (Richmond Times Dispatch)—returns with a resonant novel of love and atonement, blood and vengeance, set in western North Carolina, involving two young sisters, a wayward father, and an enemy determined to see him pay for his sins.
After their mother's unexpected death, twelve-year-old Easter and her six-year-old sister Ruby are adjusting to life in foster care when their errant father, Wade, suddenly appears. Since Wade signed away his legal rights, the only way he can get his daughters back is to steal them away in the night.
Brady Weller, the girls' court-appointed guardian, begins looking for Wade, and he quickly turns up unsettling information linking Wade to a recent armored car heist, one with a whopping $14.5 million missing. But Brady Weller isn't the only one hunting the desperate father. Robert Pruitt, a shady and mercurial man nursing a years-old vendetta, is also determined to find Wade and claim his due.
Narrated by a trio of alternating voices, This Dark Road to Mercy is a story about the indelible power of family and the primal desire to outrun a past that refuses to let go.
- File Size: 693 KB
- Print Length: 245 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0062088254
- Publisher: William Morrow (January 28, 2014)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DB2YN9I
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,239 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #51
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense - #90
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > American
- #51
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense - #90
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > American
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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