MARCH 2014 - AudioFile
In the fall of 1998, 12-year-old Easter Quilby wasn't sure it was a good idea to sneak out of her foster care home to leave with her wayward father, but she and her little sister went anyway, setting off a chain of events that had far-reaching effects. Jenna Lamia's remarkable performance makes her the star of this ensemble audiobook. Her impeccable North Carolina accent and pitch-perfect expression enliven Easter's mixed emotions, such as distrust colored by yearning and excitement dampened by misgivings. Two men follow Easter's journey, one looking to rescue the girls and one seeking revenge on the father. Erik Bergman's slow, gentle voice is a match for Brady's kindness, while Scott Sowers makes listeners shiver with his rendering of Pruitt, a sociopathic hit man. C.B.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
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.
The Guardian
Exciting and suspenseful as well as moving, with a captivating heroine, this is a tremendous book.
O Magazine
Darkly mesmerizing.
Wilmington Star News
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.
Jess Walter
This Dark Road to Mercy is a terrific, moving and propulsive novel: Harper Lee by way of Elmore Leonard.
Lee Smith
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.
Jill McCorkle
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.
Garden & Gun magazine
[Cash is] a new master of Southern gothic.
MARCH 2014 - AudioFile
In the fall of 1998, 12-year-old Easter Quilby wasn't sure it was a good idea to sneak out of her foster care home to leave with her wayward father, but she and her little sister went anyway, setting off a chain of events that had far-reaching effects. Jenna Lamia's remarkable performance makes her the star of this ensemble audiobook. Her impeccable North Carolina accent and pitch-perfect expression enliven Easter's mixed emotions, such as distrust colored by yearning and excitement dampened by misgivings. Two men follow Easter's journey, one looking to rescue the girls and one seeking revenge on the father. Erik Bergman's slow, gentle voice is a match for Brady's kindness, while Scott Sowers makes listeners shiver with his rendering of Pruitt, a sociopathic hit man. C.B.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2013-11-17
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 naïve 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.
