Mercy Road - Hardcover

Pagani, Dalia

3.47

49 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385320167 ISBN 13: 9780385320160

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1998

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From an astonishing new voice on the American literary landscape comes a powerful, haunting novel set against the harsh beauty of rural Vermont.  In Mercy Road Dalia Pagani exposes the soul of a wounded family, holding us captive under a spell of unforgettable characters in a mythic place.

On a rocky, windswept mountain ridge at the end of Mercy Road lives a family called Summer.  Earl and Darlene, trappers born to the ridge, rooted to the land, struggle to find hope and love in an unforgiving place.  Butch is their firstborn--with his father's brawn and his mother's tenderness, he would become his brother's keeper.  Then Sid, the strange, silent son, willed to live by his mother's fierce love.  And Tina, the only daughter, full of promise, but in whose heart beats her family's madness.

For the Summers, a difficult life comes apart one fall day when Darlene does the unthinkable, fleeing the ridge for a long, strange winter in New York.  In the wake of her flight, each of the Summers is driven, as if by the land itself, to make choices that will shape the rest of their lives.

In the hands of a remarkable writer, Mercy Road becomes an epic drama of heroism and redemption, of the forces that bind us to the land that gave us roots, and of what is passed from generation to generation.  At once fierce and tender, raw and lyrical, Mercy Road is a riveting portrait of an unseen corner of the American landscape.

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From the Publisher:

"Hypnotic...Pagani...has her hand on the pulse of the human heart and a keen understanding of the soul...Mercy Road is the kind of first novel every wrtier wishes to write."
--Peter Landry in the Philadelphia Inquirer

"Mercy Road is a gorgeous piece of work. Dalia Pagani has fashioned a true myth and her people have been walking through my dreams since I finished it."
--Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

About the Author:

Dalia Pagani grew up in Alaska and Latin America. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the Vermont Council of the Arts, and her short fiction has been nominated for several awards, including the Pushcart Prize and the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Formerly a journalist, she now teaches fiction writing at a college in New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband and two children.

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