A Land More Kind Than Home, by Wiley Cash. HarperCollins Publishers, 2012. 309 pp.
“A Land More Kind Than Home” was billed as a thriller—but that shouldn’t be the main reason you read Wiley Cash’s first novel, and it’s not the first descriptor I’d apply to it. Yes, there’s a villain who’s counterbalanced by a few good people. Yes, something bad—very bad—happens, and as is usually the case in a thriller, a few narrators tell the story of that event. And yes, you really want to know who did it, and why.
But hats off to Cash for making his readers care even more about how it will leave those who remain. Three narrators reveal the story, each with a distinct voice. There’s Jess Hall —a 9-year-old boy who, with his autistic older brother, Stump, is prone to looking in windows where awful things are happening. And an octogenarian midwife, Adelaide Lyle, who’s chosen to leave The River Road Church of Christ in Signs Following because she knows the history and snakehandling proclivities of the new preacher, Carson Chambliss. Monroe County Sheriff Clem Barefield, who lost his son in a tragic accident years earlier, tries to keep order among people who lead hard lives in a hard place.
However painful the events of Cash’s novel are, know that they’re tempered by compassion and acceptance. One reviewer put it this way: “A lyrical and poignant debut…’A Land More Kind than Home’ explores the power of forgiveness [and] the strength of family bonds.”
Read it as a thriller for its fearless truth-telling—and then be glad for its accepting and compassionate ending.
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash. HarperCollins Publishers, 2012. 309 pp.
The story above first appeared in our November / December 2022 issue.
