Wiley Cash: Meeting the Author
I went to another author signing at Malaprop's last Friday, this time for Wiley Cash. I just reviewed his second novel, This Dark Road to Mercy, last Tuesday. I highly recommend it. He's also the author of A Land More Kind than Home, which I haven't read but which has been highly recommended to me by a friend I trust. I was so close I was afraid I would blind him with my camera flash if I took a picture while he was speaking! I met that friend and a couple of others at the store. They were running late but they said it was getting so full that staff were starting to turn people away at the door! Wiley made his appearance and we were pleasantly surprised to realize that he is hilarious! This Dark Road... is fairly dark and it sounds like A Land More Kind... is as well, so I was expecting someone serious. He kept us all laughing pretty much the whole time! He opened by telling us where the idea for his second book came from. His wife swears that she was an awesome softball player when she was younger, "Something I have seen no evidence of, nor have I heard anyone corroborate her claims," but the only thing that kept her from being truly great was the fact that she couldn't slide into base. So her dad would take her out to the ball field after he got home from work and they would practice sliding. And there was the seed for fathers and daughters and baseball. Wiley grew up around Gastonia, NC, where the book is set, and he knew a couple of girls who were in foster care there. They were sent back to live with their mother when they were something…
