Cash’s first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home was widely admired. Here he tells a tale which is equally gripping and endearing. Easter Quillby is a girl on the verge of womanhood, and she and her younger sister are in care. Their mother is dead, and their father, Wade Chesterfield, has disappeared. He turns up unannounced, and abducts them from the institution.
What follows is a picaresque chase across America. The children are being hunted by Brady Weller, an ex-cop, but now a public guardian. In turn, Chesterfield – having conned a small fortune from a gangster – is the prey of Bobby Pruitt, a steroidal malcontent, who wants revenge on Chesterfield for an old wrong, and also wants to lay hands on the missing cash. David Prestidge loved this novel as much as the first, and also interviewed Wiley Cash.