Join BookBrowse today and get access to free books, our twice monthly digital magazine, and more.

This Dark Road to Mercy: Book summary and reviews of This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash

This Dark Road to Mercy

by Wiley Cash

This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash X
This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash
  • Critics' Opinion:

    Readers' rating:

  • Published Jan 2014
    240 pages
    Genre: Literary Fiction

    Publication Information

  • Rate this book


Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Narrated in alternating voices, this book captures the reader's attention from the start and never lets go. Readers who enjoyed Cash's first book or who are fans of well-written Southern fiction will enjoy this novel." - Library Journal

"Cash follows his evocative debut with another striking take on Southern literature...A story of family, blood loyalty and making choices that can seem right but end up wrong." - Kirkus

"This Dark Road to Mercy is a terrific, moving and propulsive novel: Harper Lee by way of Elmore Leonard." - Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins

"A time capsule and at times an edgy thriller, but at its fine emotional center it's all about what it means to be a father." - Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life

"The endangered little sisters Easter and Ruby will go straight to your heart, which will be thumping like crazy the entire time you're reading this novel straight through as I did." - Lee Smith, author of Guests on Earth

This information about This Dark Road to Mercy was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Becky H

THIS DARK ROAD TO MERCY
Two little girls who have just lost their mother to cancer are in foster care about to be sent to Alaska to live with Grandparents they have never seen. Enter their n’er-do-well father, a failed major league pitcher with a dark past and a sudden interest in his daughters. Dad also suddenly has LOTS of money, a damaged baseball player and the FBI following him. A former cop turned guardian ad litem is the girl’s only advocate when Dad kidnaps them and tries to disappear.

Cash shows us that he can write fragile, failed, caring, evil, greedy, selfless, kind, merciless and merciful characters with a tight plot. THIS DARK ROAD TO MERCY will have you reading far into the night to find out what happens to Easter and Ruby, the money, and the dad.

In Cash’s debut novel, A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME, he gave us an atmospheric Southern gothic novel. DARK ROAD invests more in character in this thriller that at times seems like a friendly family drama – but be not deceived, this novel has true darkness as well as true mercy. Well worth your time!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Wiley Cash Author Biography

Photo: Kevin Millard

Wiley Cash is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home. A native of North Carolina, he has held residency positions at Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University. He and his wife live in Wilmington, North Carolina. Wiley's website is www.wileycash.com

Author Interview
Link to Wiley Cash's Website

Name Pronunciation
Wiley Cash: WHY-lee

Other books by Wiley Cash at BookBrowse
  • The Last Ballad jacket
  • A Land More Kind Than Home jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more literary fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Support BookBrowse

Join our inner reading circle, go ad-free and get way more!

Find out more


Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Clear
    Clear
    by Carys Davies
    John Ferguson is a principled man. But when, in 1843, those principles drive him to break from the ...
  • Book Jacket: Change
    Change
    by Edouard Louis
    Édouard Louis's 2014 debut novel, The End of Eddy—an instant literary success, published ...
  • Book Jacket: Big Time
    Big Time
    by Ben H. Winters
    Big Time, the latest offering from prolific novelist and screenwriter Ben H. Winters, is as ...
  • Book Jacket: Becoming Madam Secretary
    Becoming Madam Secretary
    by Stephanie Dray
    Our First Impressions reviewers enjoyed reading about Frances Perkins, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
A Great Country
by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
A novel exploring the ties and fractures of a close-knit Indian-American family in the aftermath of a violent encounter with the police.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The House on Biscayne Bay
    by Chanel Cleeton

    As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.

  • Book Jacket

    The Stone Home
    by Crystal Hana Kim

    A moving family drama and coming-of-age story revealing a dark corner of South Korean history.

Win This Book
Win The Funeral Cryer

The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu

Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

M as A H

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.