Desperation Road

Description

In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, a novel set in a rough-and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect For eleven years the clock has been ticking for Russell Gaines as he sat in Parchman penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta. His time now up, and believing his debt paid, he returns home only to discover that revenge lives and breathes all around. On the day of his release, a woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the interstate under the punishing summer sun. Desperate and exhausted, the pair spend their last dollar on a motel room for the night, a night that ends with Maben running through the darkness holding a pistol, and a dead deputy sprawled across the road in the glow of his own headlights. With dawn, destinies collide, and Russell is forced to decide whose life he will save - his own or that of the woman and child? * Longlisted for the 2017 CWA Gold Dagger award. Reviewed in the UK Daily Mail here.

Michael Farris Smith is the award-winning author of Salvage This World, NICK, Blackwood, The Fighter, Desperation Road, Rivers, and The Hands of Strangers. His novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Book Riot and numerous other outlets, and have been named Indie Next, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has also written the feature-film adaptations of his novels Desperation Road and The Fighter, titled for the screen as Rumble Through the Dark. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.

This is just stunning ... Little short of perfection ... Think Daniel Woodrell, Bill Beverly and Lou Berney for starters and that will give you an idea of the style, the range and the humanity of the novel -- Graham Minett, author of The Hidden Legacy A harsh but beautiful thriller that has you cheering under your breath for its wounded, fallible protagonist throughout -- Maxim Jakubowski * LoveReading * Flickers with poetic splendour... Repetitions, the falling cadences of country music, phrases strung together in long passages of sustained beauty: it's rare for desperation to be rendered with such intensity -- Jeff Noon * Spectator * a wonderfully evoked and deeply touching work -- Doug Johnstone * The Big Issue * Michael Farris Smith's prose focuses on small details and has a rhythm that gives it a poetic quality; a comparison with Annie Proulx is not overly enthusiastic -- Chris Roberts * Crime Review *