In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron
Rash, an Amazon Best Book of the Month set in a tough-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
sits in Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta. His sentence is
now up, and he believes his debt has been paid. But when he returns
home, he soon discovers that revenge lives and breathes all around him.
On the same day that Russell is released from prison, 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 room for
the night, a night that ends with Maben running through the darkness
holding a pistol, and a dead deputy sprawled in the middle of the road
in the glow of his own headlights. With the dawn, destinies collide, and
Russell is forced to decide whose life he will save -- his own or those
of the woman and child. Delivered in powerful and lyrical prose,
Desperation Road is a story of troubled souls twisted with regret and
bound by secrets that stretch over the years and across the land.
