This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00H8VAD42 | Format: PDF
This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel Description
Hailed as "mesmerizing" (New York Times Book Review) and "as if Cormac McCarthy decided to rewrite Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird" (Richmond Times-Dispatch), A Land More Kind Than Home made Wiley Cash an instant literary sensation. His resonant new novel, This Dark Road to Mercy, is a tale of love and atonement, blood and vengeance, a story that involves two young sisters, a wayward father, and an enemy determined to see him pay for his sins.
When their mother dies unexpectedly, twelve-year-old Easter Quillby and her six-year-old sister, Ruby, are shuffled into the foster care system in Gastonia, North Carolina, a little town not far from the Appalachian Mountains. But just as they settle into their new life, their errant father, Wade, an ex-minor-league baseball player whom they haven't seen in years, suddenly reappears and steals them away in the middle of the night.
Brady Weller, the girls' court-appointed guardian, begins looking for Wade, and quickly turns up unsettling information linking him to a multimillion-dollar robbery. But Brady isn't the only one hunting him. Also on the trail is Robert Pruitt, a mercurial man nursing a years-old vendetta, a man determined to find Wade and claim what he believes he is owed.
The combination of Cash's evocative and intimate Southern voice and those of the alternating narrators, Easter, Brady, and Pruitt, brings this soulful story vividly to life. At once captivating and heartbreaking, This Dark Road to Mercy is a testament to the unbreakable bonds of family and the primal desire to outrun a past that refuses to let go.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 7 hours and 53 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Harper Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: January 28, 2014
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00H8VAD42
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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