This Dark Road to Mercy - Large Print by Wiley Cash (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

Wiley Cash's debut, hailed as "mesmerizing" (New York Times Book Review) and "as if Cormac McCarthy decided to rewrite To Kill a Mockingbird" (Richmond Times-Dispatch), made him a literary sensation. His new novel is a tale of love and atonement, a story of two sisters, a wayward father, and an enemy determined to see him pay.

When their mother dies unexpectedly, twelve-year-old Easter and six-year-old Ruby are shuffled into foster care. But just as they settle into their new life, their errant father, Wade, reappears and steals the girls away.

Now two men are on their trail but for very different reasons--one, a former detective and the girls' court-appointed guardian, who has linked Wade to a multimillion-dollar robbery and the other, a mercurial, angry man who is determined to claim his due. Narrated in alternating voices that are at once captivating and heartbreaking, This Dark Road to Mercy is a soulful story about the -emo-tional pull of family and the primal desire to outrun a past that refuses to let go.

Review Quotes

"Shows no signs of a sophomore slump. . . . Cash writes in the "Rough South" tradition of Harry Crewes, Larry Brown and the late Tim McLaurin. His blue-collar saga, narrated by different characters in turn, is as smooth, clean and unembellished as a Seagrove pottery or a Shaker Chair. His text is as bloody as a Cormac McCarthy novel, but Cash gives more room to the angels of his characters' better natures. There is a chance for redemption at the end of this road. This Dark Road to Mercy will stick in readers' minds, especially Cash's heroine, feisty, red-haired and freckled Easter, who joins Scout and Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster in the pantheon of Southern kids in literature." - Wilmington Star News on This Dark Road to Mercy
"This Dark Road to Mercy will stick in readers' minds, especially Cash's heroine, feisty, red-haired and freckled Easter, who joins Scout and Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster in the pantheon of Southern kids in literature." - Wilmington Star News
"This Dark Road to Mercy is a rare breed of storytelling. . . . I knew this from the start, by the first paragraph, when 12-year-old Easter Quillby declared that her father was a loser, a liar and a thief. . . . By the time the pursuit came to its final inning, I was tripping over the words, trying to read them as fast as possible. . . . Cash's new novel is a knockout home run." - The Greenville News (SC) on This Dark Road to Mercy
"Exciting and suspenseful as well as moving, with a captivating heroine, this is a tremendous book." - The Guardian
"The voice is Southern and oh so charming in This Dark Road to Mercy, a crime novel that's also a road movie and a baseball tale and a wicked twist on Sixth-Grade Father-Daughter Night." - New York Times Book Review
"The voice is Southern and oh so charming in This Dark Road to Mercy, a crime novel that's also a road movie and a baseball tale and a wicked twist on Sixth-Grade Father-Daughter Night." - New York Times Book Review
"[Cash is] a new master of Southern gothic." - Garden & Gun magazine
"Cash follows his evocative debut with another striking take on Southern literature. . . . In the rhythms and cadence of the South, Cash offers a tale about family and about the tenuous link among the right choices, living with consequences or seeking redemption. . . . A story of family, blood loyalty and making choices that can seem right but end up wrong." - Kirkus Reviews
"Cash follows his evocative debut with another striking take on Southern literature. . . . In the rhythms and cadence of the South, Cash offers a tale about family and about the tenuous link among the right choices, living with consequences or seeking redemption." - Kirkus Reviews
"Darkly mesmerizing." - O Magazine
"A heartfelt and nuanced story, exploring the lines between fear and trust, redemption and love." - Chicago Tribune on This Dark Road to Mercy
"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 (starred review)
"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 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
"On the heels of his wildly successful debut, Wiley Cash has written another winner. This Dark Road to Mercy is filled with suspense and beckons you to read faster to find all of the answers, but don't, for fear you will miss the wonderful richness and detail of this particular time and place. The homerun race is on but there's a whole lot more at stake. It's 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, New York Times bestselling 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. Wiley Cash knows how to grab his reader on page one and hang on for dear life as he presents brilliant portraits of desperate people caught up in an underworld where danger, damage, drugs, and fractured families are all clasped in the tight fist of poverty." - Lee Smith, author of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger