This Dark Road to Mercy

February 17, 2014
Cash's follow up to his bestselling debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, picks up as Easter Quillby and her younger sister reconnect with their deadbeat father, Wade. With help from Brady Weller, an ex-cop, Wade and the daughters are on the run from clichéd bad man Pruitt, who on multiple occasions raises his sunglasses to deliver punch lines as he hunts Wade for stealing money from his gangster boss. The plot unfolds against a backdrop of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's race to break the season home run recordâan all-too-obvious metaphor for the main story, which culminates in a bathroom confrontation at a baseball stadium where the two players meet. Most of Cash's characters lay flatly within the high drama of the plot. Brady's friend, the Black & Mildâsmoking, rap-music-listening Roc, the novel's most notable character of color, delivers cringe-worthy lines like, "What up, playa?" and "Damn, son." Even fans of Cash's first novel may find the melodrama of his latest more of a quick fix than a memorable read. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates.

Starred review from November 15, 2013

Cash's second novel, after his successful debut, A Land More Kind Than Home, does not disappoint. Twelve-year-old Easter and her six-year-old sister Ruby are caught in the foster care system in Gastonia, NC. Having signed away his legal custodial rights, their erstwhile father, Wade, an ex-minor league baseball player, has always said he would take care of them. One night he spirits them away from the one stable home the girls have known. Add to this mix a thug looking for Wade, owing to some missing money. Luckily the girls have someone on their side: Brady Weller, a court-appointed guardian who begins to look for them. VERDICT 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. [See Prepub Alert, 8/5/13; library marketing.]--Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2013

Cash left the gate grandly last year with A Land More Kind Than Home, which was a New York Times and an Indie Next best seller, a Discover Great New Writers pick, winner of the John Creasey Dagger for Best New Author, and an LJ Best Book. In Cash's second novel, 12-year-old Easter and her little sister, Ruby, end up in North Carolina's foster care system when their mother dies. Their long-vanished father, Wade, suddenly reappears and promptly makes off with them, pursued by both the girls' legal guardian and a shady figure out for vengeance. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2013
Cash (A Land More Kind Than Home, 2012) follows his evocative debut with another striking take on Southern literature. Wade Chesterfield's a failed baseball player. He claims to have been Sammy Sosa's teammate on the Gastonia Rangers, a North Carolina minor league team. Now, Wade hangs drywall. Brady Weller used to be a Gastonia police detective, until he killed a teenage boy in a traffic accident. Now, Brady sells home security systems, offering silent penance by serving as a court guardian ad litem. That's how Brady meets Easter and Ruby Quillby, wards of the state. They're Wade's children, their mother dead of an overdose. Wade, parental rights signed long ago, now wants to be a true father. Wade's enabled by found money: a backpack of cash linked to an armored car robbery. 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. The story unfolds in three voices: 12-year-old Easter, echoing from naive to wise, hopeful to fearful, believing and doubting; Brady, weary, bitter, intent on finding justice where he can; and finally, Robert Pruitt, former baseball player, now an ex-con driven by 'roid-rage and mindless hatred for Wade, who long ago hit him with a beanball and maimed him. Wade persuades his daughters to flee their foster home. In dread of being sent to Alaska to grandparents she's never met, Easter agrees, since "leaving with him seemed like the best answer." Despite admonitions from his former partner and threats from the FBI, Brady's intent on finding the girls. Then he learns Pruitt's being paid by Tommy Broughton, a small-time hood who engineered the armored car heist, to find Wade and the stolen money, and Brady's pursuit grows more urgent, realizing Pruitt will kill the girls to get to Wade. A story of family, blood loyalty and making choices that can seem right but end up wrong.

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December 1, 2013
When 12-year-old Easter and six-year-old Ruby's mother dies from an overdose, the two young sisters are put into a foster home. Their father, Wade, who had given up legal rights to the girls, finds them there and kidnaps them. Suspected of also having stolen a portion of the take in a multimillion-dollar theft from the man who masterminded the heist, Wade is being pursued by a psychopathic hit man determined to retrieve the stolen money. Also in pursuit is Brady Weller, a former policeman who is the girls' court-appointed guardian. Who will find Wade and the girls first is clearly a matter of life and death. Cash (A Land More Kind Than Home, 2012) tells his fast-moving, suspenseful story from three points of view: Easter's, Weller's, and the hit man Pruitt's. Both Wade and Pruitt are former baseball players, and Cash has cleverly folded another chase into their story: Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's pursuit of a new home-run record. Set in the Carolinas, Cash's novel is a fine example of reader-pleasing southern storytelling in the mold of Ron Rash and Tom Franklin.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)