Desperation Road

by Michael Farris Smith

Overview

An Amazon Best Book of the Month
An Indie Next Pick
A Barnes & Noble Discover Pick
One of Southern Living's Best Southern Books of 2017

In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, a novel 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 o 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478945840
Publisher:	Hachette Book Group
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 5.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Michael Farris Smith has been awarded the Transatlantic Review Award, Brick Streets Press Short Story Award, a Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, and the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature. He is a graduate of Mississippi State and the Center for Writers at Southern Miss. He lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters.

Editorial Reviews

11/14/2016
Like those in his 2013 novel, Rivers, the characters in Smith’s latest struggle to put the past behind them—but this time, the storms that have torn their lives apart are mostly of their own making. Russell Gaines has served 11 years in prison for killing a man while driving drunk. Released, he rides the bus back to his home in McComb, Miss., only to be beaten and threatened with revenge by the dead man’s brothers. That same evening, homeless onetime addict Maben Jones also heads toward McComb. Without cash and transport, she leaves her young daughter, Annalee, sleeping in a cheap motel and tries to turn some tricks in the parking lot. Instead, a deputy abducts and rapes her. Grabbing his gun, Maben shoots him to death and flees the scene. As she tries to protect Annalee and evade capture, her path and Russell’s cross—but whether they will help or just endanger each other is far from clear. The plot’s gritty outlines notwithstanding, Smith is a meticulous craftsman who evokes his protagonists and their world with patience and subtlety. Ultimately, the road of the novel’s title moves not just through desperation, but also into a tentative landscape of hope, and perhaps even redemption. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award

"Desperation Road is an elegantly written, perfectly paced novel about a man and woman indelibly marked by violence. Characters who would be mere stereotypes in a lesser writer's hands are fully realized, and we come to care deeply as they attempt to create a better life for themselves. An outstanding performance."—Ron Rash

"Michael Farris Smith is one of the best writers of his generation, and this very well may be his best work—taut, tense, and impossible to put down."—Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

"Michael Farris Smith's Desperation Road reads as if it were forged in a fire stoked by the ghosts of Carson McCullers, Larry Brown, and William Gay. The result is a novel rife with violent beauty and incredible grace. Smith's terse, muscular prose encapsulates a heart that renders this novel as rich and alive and wounded as any you'll find in contemporary fiction."
—Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy

"Anchored by prose that is both poetic and brutal, Desperation Road is a gorgeous and violent book. But don't be fooled by the title. Michael Farris Smith's novel teems with the honest and believable humanity that only the bravest writers dare to search for in the most troubled souls."—Ivy Pochoda, author of Visitation Street

"Michael Farris Smith taps into the rhythm of a world I know, and he does it so well, with such ease, that it's almost like I'm living it instead of reading it. His anti-heroes teeter always between the drag-out skids and sweet redemption, and they create a beautiful, true tension that makes this novel burn and thrum in your hands."—Jamie Kornegay, author of Soil

"A novel that lends dignity and grace to those too often damned, DESPERATION ROAD is fearless, guttural, and thunderously heartfelt. Quite simply one of our finest writers at work today, Michael Farris Smith has made his own place at the table."
—David Joy, author of Where Light Tends to Go

"This book tore at my heart and infected my brain. It reminded me how powerful literature can be, and how often it falls short. Michael Farris Smith is a huge talent."
—Richard Grant, author of Dispatches from Pluto

"Desperation Road is a brilliantly compelling novel dealing with an enormously difficult but fundamental reality of the human condition: how lives lived intensely for years without connection to or even knowledge of each other can suddenly intersect with profound consequences. Michael Farris Smith is a prodigiously talented writer whose new book is not only an exciting read but an important literary event."
—Robert Olen Butler, author of A Small Hotel

"Smith writes shapely prose and sharp dialogue and everywhere displays an acute sense of the moments and pain that can define lives in a small town."
—Kirkus (starred review)

"Smith is a meticulous craftsman who evokes his protagonists and their world with patience and subtlety. Ultimately, the road of the novel's title moves just through desperation, but also into a tentative landscape of hope, and perhaps even redemption."—Publishers Weekly

"Smith's lean, visceral prose will keep readers glued to a richly textured and briskly paced story."
—Booklist

"The book is elegant, even profound, the cadence of the words alluring, bringing the reader deeper into this world of gray.... Amidst this, there is a glimmer of hope to lead them into brightness again."—The Clarion-Ledger

"Dazzling.... Smith is incredibly gifted; emotion and poetry soak his straightforward prose, its easy flow masking the precision behind every word. He imbues the everyday slog of difficult lives with reverence and grace, painting the faintest glimmer of hope in opportunities lost and prices paid for flying too close to the web."
—Shelf Awareness

"Put the name Michael Farris Smith on your must-read list.... Desperation Road doesn't meet or exceed expectations so much as blows the doors, windows and roof off the house in which it lives. It's a book for which you'll want to set aside everything else."
—Book Reporter

"Smith writes in spare, sharply observed language, like a more colloquial take on Cormac McCarthy.... The steady accumulation of phrases in Smith's prose conveys a sense of control even as the characters' lives seem marked by random misfortune."
—Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Elegant prose and masterful storytelling transform this tale into a work of literary art.... The author's skills are apparent on every page. The simplicity and clarity of the writing underlie and enhance his uncanny ability to unerringly depict a scene. The Southern, small town locale is so artfully described that when lightening strikes, the reader flinches."
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

From the Publisher

11/15/2016
As he did in his debut Rivers, Smith once again uses his native Mississippi as the perfect backdrop for this dark but satisfying novel of coincidence and revenge. Tasting freedom for the first time since high school, Russell Gaines is coming home after serving an 11-year prison sentence for killing a young man while driving drunk. At the same time, a woman named Maben returning to the same town finds herself on the run after a fatal encounter with a corrupt local cop. As their lives intersect, both are forced to face their pasts and decide on their futures. Russell and Maben are well-developed characters, and it's easy to understand their choices even if they don't always seem to be the right ones. Smith's comfortable pacing allows for plenty of action while never rushing readers, so they can enjoy the excellent writing. VERDICT Smith's second novel is every bit as good as his first, an excellent piece of Southern crime fiction for Daniel Woodrell and Tom Franklin afficionados. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/16.]—Craig L. Shufelt, Fort Erie P.L., Ont.

Library Journal

★ 2016-10-05
Two hard-luck cases collide in this smooth-flowing novel of the Deep South, where a Mississippi town harbors a long-brewing hunger for vengeance and a slim chance of redemption.Maben and Russell are heading to McComb from different directions, geographically and otherwise. She has been on the road for too many years after a terrible car accident and has tried almost everything to make a life somewhere for herself and her young daughter. He has been serving 11 years in prison for a drunken driving incident that killed a young man. But fate takes Maben on yet another nasty detour via a deputy sheriff who rapes her and then calls up two friends to join the party. Maben grabs his gun and ends that soiree before it gets going. Russell steps off a bus and into the fists and boots of the dead young man’s two brothers. Russell’s stolid father and a Mexican woman he has taken in offer stability when it’s most needed. Another deputy sheriff, who played high school football with Russell, faces the awkward task of finding out why his old friend turned up at the scene of Maben’s highly motivated gunplay shortly after investigators arrived. Smith (Rivers, 2013, etc.) gives Maben a gritty strength that may not be enough in her current plight. Russell, a moody, meditative loner who knows that “rough lives got rougher,” has his hands full with the murderous brothers and seeking out the woman he lost while in prison, but he’s inclined to help where he can. The book’s brooding atmosphere lights up often with strong scenes of high tension. Smith writes shapely prose and sharp dialogue and everywhere displays an acute sense of the moments and pain that can define lives in a small town.

Kirkus Reviews