Published by Little, Brown & Co. on Feb. 7, 2017
Newly released from a Mississippi prison, Russell returns to the town where his father is waiting for him. Russell’s mother died while he was in prison and his father filled the unbearable silence by bringing a woman, an undocumented immigrant, into his home. In addition to his father, trouble is waiting for Russell, old scores that people feel a need to settle. Russell did something stupid but not malicious. He can’t put the crime behind him and neither can the malicious people who think he was not sufficiently punished for it. His former fiancé called off his marriage after he went to prison and now has three kids and a life she regrets. Russell isn’t searching for forgiveness or redemption, nor does he believe he deserves any.
Larry and his brother Walt are the key antagonists who trouble Russell during the novel. Larry isn’t allowed to see the son from his first marriage and his second wife is publicly and repeatedly unfaithful to him. Seeking revenge against Russell may be a way or restoring his sense of manhood.
The other desperate character in Desperation Road is Maben. Broke and homeless, she’s taking her daughter Annalee back to Mississippi because she has nowhere else to go. Desperate circumstances motivate her to take a desperate action. Soon enough, she needs to leave, but again has nowhere to go, no plan, no help, and no hope. Her road intersects with Russell’s a bit beyond the novel’s midway point. That part of the novel hinges on a large coincidence but coincidences happen. This one isn’t so outrageous as to damage the story’s credibility.
Some of the supporting characters are drunks and scoundrels, or just drunks, but other characters are living a responsible life, doing their best with what they have, which isn’t much. Michael Farris Smith’s muscular prose captures the rural southern characters who inhabit his novel (“Russell came across the pond bank and said how you doing old man and the old man grinned with his lips held tight to keep it from getting away from him and he gave Russell a solid handshake as if he’d just sold him a calf”).
I’m impressed with the humanity and understanding that shines through in this novel, the recognition that people are defined by more than their mistakes. Russell believes that rough lives get rougher and he doesn’t believe in fairy tale endings, but the reader hopes that he will manage to find a way out of his various predicaments.
In that regard, I’m also impressed with the suspense that Smith builds. Whether things will end well for Russell and Mabel is the question that hovers over the story. These are people for whom nothing ever seems to end well, so the sense of foreboding is palpable even as the reader roots for their survival. If they stay alive and stay out of prison, that’s the best they can expect. They are, in the novel’s words, “holding on,” and whether they can hold on a while longer is the question that keeps the reader involved with this quietly intense story.
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