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

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  • Readers' Rating (4):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2014, 240 pages
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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.

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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

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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!

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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
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