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gervase_fenI really enjoyed this one. “This Dark Road to Mercy” unfolds through three characters’ points of view – twelve year old Easter Quillby, the eldest of two sisters living in a children’s home in Gastonia, North Carolina ; Brady Weller, their guardian ad litem (case worker equivalent), an ex-cop trying to recover from a shocking incident that ended his police career ; and Pruitt, a steroid-abusing bouncer, muscle for the local crime boss, tasked with tracking down Easter’s wayward father Wade. Wade has come into some money – thousands and thousands of dollars – which belongs to someone else, and he decides to use it to re-connect with the daughters he once abandoned to the county.
This is set in the summer of 1998, and the home run duel between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire – although a lot of the baseball terminology was lost on me, Wiley Cash writes about the sport so well that I was as captivated by it as Easter and Ruby. There’s a tense showdown between the principals that takes place during a key match at the Busch Stadium in St Louis, when a close-up on the Jumbotron screen initiates the final act.
Well written (the chapters in Easter’s voice are particularly well done) and manages to disguise some fairly familiar character types (Pruitt is a ‘realistic’ version of Paulie from Lee Child’s Persuader, his boss is a Little League Tony Soprano.) Best of all, brisk, and it left me wanting more.
This is set in the summer of 1998, and the home run duel between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire – although a lot of the baseball terminology was lost on me, Wiley Cash writes about the sport so well that I was as captivated by it as Easter and Ruby. There’s a tense showdown between the principals that takes place during a key match at the Busch Stadium in St Louis, when a close-up on the Jumbotron screen initiates the final act.
Well written (the chapters in Easter’s voice are particularly well done) and manages to disguise some fairly familiar character types (Pruitt is a ‘realistic’ version of Paulie from Lee Child’s Persuader, his boss is a Little League Tony Soprano.) Best of all, brisk, and it left me wanting more.
