Trailer Park Tuesday: This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.

I weep with pity for those of you who missed Wiley Cash's debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home.  A thunderbolt of a novel about faith and family, it garnered critical praise, readerly love, and cannonballed onto the New York Times bestseller list.  If you didn't discover Wiley C. last year, now is your hour of redemption.  His new novel, This Dark Road to Mercy, lands in bookstores this month and, from the little I've read of it, Wiley has proved that lightning does strike twice in the same place.  Set in Cash's own hometown of Gastonia, North Carolina, This Dark Road to Mercy is about two young sisters, Easter and Ruby Quillby, who are placed in foster care after their mother dies.  Then along comes their ne'er-do-well father Wade, an ex-minor league baseball player, who steals the girls away and takes them on the road with him.  Brady Weller, the girls' court-appointed guardian, sets off to look for them.  Also in pursuit: Robert Pruitt who, as Cash explains in the book's trailer, was blinded by one of Wade's wild pitches.  He's now out for revenge and you just know he's not going to settle for a simple "I'm sorry."  Jess Walter (Beautiful Ruins) calls This Dark Road to Mercy, "Harper Lee by way of Elmore Leonard."  Watching the trailer, you get a good sense of the emotional conflict at stake in these pages.  As Cash admits, putting children in peril is "exciting, but also worrisome."  To me, the only thing more worrisome is the thought that you don't buy and read Wiley's novels.  So please set my mind at ease; go out and get your hands on some Cash.