Desperate no more!

2017 (aka The Year of the Reading Slump) has been wearing me down with lots of mediocre books and very few 5-star standouts. Reading "Desperation Road" back-to-back with S.M. Hulse's [b:Black River|20256635|Black River|S.M. Hulse|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1389051818s/20256635.jpg|28068623] has put me on a new course!

After serving more than decade in prison, Russell Gaines tries to start his life anew in his small Mississippi town. Unfortunately for him, a few people in town don't think Russell has paid for his crime, and are intent on their own brand of justice. When Russell meets a young woman and her daughter he confronts choices that put him at odds with his own self-interest and he has to decide just who he really is.

Farris Smith's "Desperation Road" is everything one wants in a solid grit-lit novel: mistakes, regrets, flawed characters, ambiguity, redemption, "good guys" who haven't always been on the right side of the law, and awful SOBs who don't deserve mercy.

4.5 stars rounded up

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Story of two people returning home, separately, to their small town in Mississippi after much hardship: one from eleven years in prison and the other from a nomadic self-destructive life. Both are haunted by past mistakes. Both want to get their lives together. Russell is trying to figure out how to come to terms with a significant error in judgment that changed the lives of many people. Maben is trying to get her life together to provide for her young daughter. Filled with bad decisions, revenge, misfortune, and redemption.

The author has a knack for character development. The story is compelling. The prose is straight-forward and suited to the content. The setting is vividly pictured and plays a large role in the narrative. While one could question the plausibility of a few of the plot points, I was able to overlook them in the vein of “yet another poor decision” by one of the protagonists. The story contains emotional depth. Some deep questions run under the surface of this novel. What is the role of fate in life? How does a person cope with mistakes that have momentous irreversible consequences? Is there a force of good operating behind the scenes, counteracting a force of evil? How can lives be changed by helping others?

Content includes profanity, drinking while driving, drugs, sex, rape, and graphic violence. Recommended to readers that enjoy thought-provoking dark novels or struggles to overcome adversity and self-destructive tendencies. ( )

The last paragraph was dumb but I still liked the book.
3.5 stars
This book is about a woman who gets s*** on by men, over and over, but finally gets a lucky break.
When we meet Maben, age 30, and her daughter Annalee, age 9, they are walking on a highway, trying to get back to Mississippi, where her problems started. A man stops to give her a ride, and gives her $40 cash on top of that. She gets a motel room in a truck stop, using up a lot of her very small supply of money. After days walking on a highway, she and her daughter are filthy and smelly, so they both clean up and eat, and when her daughter is asleep, Maben is looking out the motel room window when she sees two teenage girls, walking in the parking lot where semi trucks are parked. They climb up on the trucks and knock on the windows, and disappear inside. Maben sees how easy it would be, and how many trucks are out there, and decides she'll take the risk. She climbs up onto the first truck she chooses, and hasn't even knocked on the window, when she loses heart, and steps down, but that's when she sees the deputy sitting in his car, watching her.
He'd been called by the owner of the truck stop diner, who saw the two teenage girls, and asked him to run them off. Those two girls are safe, but Maben is taken by the deputy out to the woods and raped, but he's not done now. He calls up some of his buddies, and when they're on their way, Maben manages to take his gun away and kill him. Now she runs back to the truck stop, and sees her daughter in the window of the motel room pulling her hair out. They run now to the highway, and make their way to a woman's shelter, where she thinks she's finally safe.
"Maben stood up and went into the bathroom and she sat down on the toilet. Buried her face in her hands. Began to breathe as if she'd climbed the stairs of a tall building. She felt herself beginning to sweat and she stood off the toilet and paced back and forth in front of the mirror. Tried to calm herself by humming and then singing but she couldn't think of a song so she turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face and told herself to breathe like a normal human being but that was damned near impossible."

Larry is the brother of the boy who was killed when Russell accidentally hit his truck with his car, while drunk driving. Russell has spent 11 years in prison, and is recently released, and when he gets off the bus in his hometown, Larry and his brother Wade are waiting for him. they beat him, but are interrupted at it. But Larry lets him know he's not done yet.
Larry is consumed by rage, and is in a toxic relationship with his wife Heather.
"... She'd been surprised when Larry asked her to marry him and he'd been surprised she said yes. She shined on his arm when he walked into a room and he had at one time liked the envious and lusty stares that she commanded.
In the first years they had been sustained by a rough, physical energy, like two rival prizefighters. Heather had always liked that Larry could find something to hate. Liked it when he talked about his dead brother and how one day he was going to settle the score. Liked it when he talked about somebody who had screwed him on a job or tried to get the best of him in a barroom. Liked that he was raw, the fierceness that came into his eyes when he was rushing toward the edge. She stoked his temper and picked fights with him just to get the blood up so that they could tear into one another like starving animals. But like those prizefighters, they were also driven by wins and losses and their relationship was more like a competition and recently Heather seemed to be winning."

Russell is Maben's savior, the most unlikely one perhaps, but the only one anyway. She had kept the deputy's gun after shooting him, kept it buried in her trash bag full of belongings. When she finally told him what happened the night of the deputy's killing, he tells her that she needs to get rid of the gun.
"He took her to the spot where he had parked and slept two nights before. They got out of the truck. Both a little drunk now. Behind the seat of the truck he found a rag. He slid the pistol from the sock and wiped it down. Then he wrapped and tied the pistol with the rag and it sat on the hood of the truck in a small knotted bundle. They milled around looking at the sky and listening to the water slap against the bank. Drinking. And when it was time to get rid of it he asked her to let him do it. Because I can throw it out farther than you. They couldn't see the splash but they heard it. Deep and certain. And she didn't know why but it was at that moment of the splash that she wanted to talk about her life. to talk to him and tell him how one day she had left the girl sitting on a bare twin mattress in a back room in a falling down house somewhere on the outskirts of some nameless town. To get cigarettes or chocolate milk or something and how when she came back a man had wandered in from another room and was going for the girl, her small wrists held together with his one hand and with his other hand unbuckling and unzipping and going after this small, helpless thing. This small thing who had a paralyzed look on her face. Maben wanted to tell him how she dropped the Brown bag holding whatever it was she thought she had to f****** have and she climbed onto his back, clawing and scratching at his eyes and trying to stab her fingers into his brain, trying to bring blood, and then how he was able to spin her and slam her against the wall and then she was going for him again and he got her by the throat and slammed her again, the air going out of her and the child screaming huddled in the corner and how he had turned again toward the child while she lay breathless. A groaning sound coming from her but no air.
he went again for the child but the rhythm of her breathing came back as if God had put his mouth to hers and then she stripped off her belt and jumped on his back again, the belt tight around his neck and she held on as he swung her around and pulled at her hair and then he was on his knees and then he was out...."

Russell is going to help Maben get out of town until the heat's died down from the deputy's killing. Lucky for russell, his father has been there for him all this time he was in prison, and Russell can leave Maben's daughter AnnaLee with him and his housekeeper Consuela. Russell takes Maben to his house, where he has stashed the money he got for pawning his ex-fiance's engagement ring.
Larry is hiding in the house waiting for him when he hears their steps and thinks it will be Russell coming down the hall. he slams into him with an aluminum bat, but it's Maben that he hits. Now Larry is on the run.
"They first spotted him 10 miles down into Louisiana driving a hundred miles an hour. Passing cars on the left or the right and running down into the median and back up again like a maniac off the leash. He held his busted hand under his armpit to try to stop the throbbing and the bleeding but there was nothing he could do about his chest except pretend there wasn't a hole in it. The blood was down his stomach and into his lap. He was sweating and had somehow managed to get a lit cigarette into his mouth and he ignored the flashing lights of first one and then two and then three Louisiana highway Patrol cars. he charged on, driving hard and driving fast and he was nearly to Hammond when he saw them up ahead. Highway patrol cars lined across the road with their light circling into the trees and he stomped the gas pedal to the floor and as he got closer he saw them standing in front of their vehicles with their rifles ready and he laughed at the thought of this. And how f****** stupid they must be to think that he gave a damn and they scattered like roaches as the truck laid on its horn and if they could have seen the man behind the wheel they would have seen him laughing at them as he jettisoned himself into their wall."
This is definitely not on a par with the book The devil all the time, but not bad.


( )

When I read [b:Rivers|16130400|Rivers|Michael Farris Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1374595954s/16130400.jpg|21955410], [a:Michael Farris Smith|4309584|Michael Farris Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494000801p2/4309584.jpg]’s debut novel, I knew he was going to be an author I could count on. Got to say, he didn’t let me down. This is another gut-wrenching read, in which you hope things will turn out better for the characters than you expect them to. After all, life isn’t handing out any bouquets in these hard lives.

Russell Gaines is a very realistically drawn ex-con, who has seen the tough side of justice and lived to tell; Meban and Annalee, her daughter, are just two beaten souls who cannot catch a break. Fate seems to have determined that these two individuals must collide into one another, and the reader cannot help feeling the tension and danger in the situation for all involved.

I held my breath, and held onto my hope, right through to the last sentence. In the end, Smith has painted a true picture of the virtues and flaws of a small southern town, in which everyone knows you and the rules are bent for or against you with the luck of the draw. He has forced you to root for the underdog, while showing you time and again that the chances are slim that your team can win. He has put on paper a portrait of life at its best and worst, how thin the line between can be, and how arbitrary even survival is from day to day.

Can’t say anything more than highly recommended. Read it. ( )

I'll round up from 3.5. I thought this was going to take the lead as my favorite of the year, but I felt like the pace got bogged down about a third of the way into it. I would have liked it have delved more into Russell and Maybin's characters and maybe have developed Russell's father more and what was going on with his home life. I didn't dislike it, but there is better grit lit out there. Just look at the praise on the cover from Tom Franklin. It does obviously strike a stronger chord with many others and I will be reading more from him in the future. ( )