This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash

by:  Wiley Cash
published by:  William Morrow
publish date:  January 28, 2014

When their mother dies unexpectedly, twelve-year-old Easter and her six-year-old sister Ruby are shuffled into the foster care system in Gastonia, North Carolina, a 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 appears and wants to spend more time with them. Unfortunately, Wade has signed away legal rights to his daughters, and the only way he can get Easter and Ruby back is to steal them away in the middle of the night.

I read Wiley Cash's A Land More Kind Than Home and really liked it so I was very interested in reading This Dark Road to Mercy.  I would like to give thanks to whoever titles these books.  Thank you for making them interesting and apart from the crowd.  

One thing I particularly liked about this book is that it doesn't necessarily fall into the adult literature genre.  I suppose if one went to a bookstore, that's where it would be, but the nature of the characters allow it to be accessible to YA readers as well.  These kinds of book are important to younger adults that may have grown out of YA and are looking to transition into adult reading.  

In This Dark Road to Mercy, Wade kidnaps his daughters from foster care.  After stumbling upon money from a bank robbery, he is suffering from the belief that he has everything that he needs to restart his family.  However, Wade has been so far removed from his daughters that he doesn't know how to take care of them.  The bank robbers want their money back, and everyone is trying to recover the kidnapped girls.  

While the setting remains somewhat the same, this book was very different from Wiley Cash's first book.  I appreciated that.  I don't like when writers get pigeonholed right away.  I think Wiley Cash is now firmly on the "must-read" list.  Hopefully, it won't be too long until the next book comes out.