This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash

Morning, readers! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Wiley Cash's latest, This Dark Road to Mercy.

It's 1998 and baseball fans around the country wait with baited breath to see whether Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa will kill the home run record previously set by Roger Maris. Easter has her heart set on it being Sosa, but the recently orphaned girl has more serious issues to deal with than just who will set the new record. In the months since the death of their mother, Easter and her sister, Ruby, have settled into a group home. Their only living grandparents are way up north in Alaska and their father relinquished parental rights three years earlier, which was also the last time Easter saw the man. But now Wade Chesterfield has returned and says he wants to do right by his kids. Unfortunately Wade has some quite unsavory folks looking for him, folks who won't hesitate to use his daughters to get to him.

Folks, Wiley Cash has done it once again. He's amazed me and blown me away with his latest, just as he did with his debut, A Land More Kind Than Home. Again we have a story concerning broken families and children literally on the brink of losing their innocence. Again we have a truly convincing child narrator as well as a cast of supporting characters and narrators that are both appealing and/or complex.

This time, though, we have a very different story and mystery. Where Land More Kind Than Home dealt in part with religious fanaticism, here we have a low level crime boss, a heist, a kidnapping, and baseball. This latest doesn't have the strong sense of place that Cash's previous book did, but the story and plot are just as well built and powerful.

I would challenge you as readers of just about any genre to pick up one of Cash's books and NOT get instantly swept away. He works magic with his writing!

To see more stops on the tour you can visit the official TLC tour page here.

For more on Wiley Cash and his books, be sure to check out his website here. You can also like him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter.