The Costco Connection

By Hope Katz Gibbs

IS I T TRUE that you can’t go home again? That’s the question award-wining author Wiley Cash asked himself when he left his native North Carolina in 2003 to study for his Ph.D. in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

He was drawn there to work under the tutelage of author Ernest J. Gaines, one of his literary heroes, whose stunning writing about rural African-American life in southwest Louisiana illustrated that it just might take leaving the place you come from to truly see—and appreciate—it for what it is.

“In writing about home, I could re-
create that place no matter where I lived,”
Cash tells The Costco Connection.
“Writing about North Carolina while liv-
ing in Louisiana allowed me to reside in
two places at once, and it was wonderful.”
From that insight came Cash’s debut novel, A
Land More Kind Than Home, the title of which is
taken from the closing lines of Thomas Wolfe’s
final novel, You Can’t Go Home Again:

“Something has spoken to me in the night … and told me I shall die, I know not where. Saying: ‘[Death is] to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.’ ”

Wolfe’s sentiment comes across proudly in Cash’s book, a haunting coming-of-age drama told through the point of view of three characters, a technique Cash uses effectively.

Among them is a curious boy named Jess Hall,

Signed book gıveaway

COSTCO HAS 50 signed copies of Wiley Cash’s A Land More Kind Than Home, to give away. To enter, go to: costcoconnection bookgiveaway.com.

NO PURCHASE, PAYMENT OR OPT-IN OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN THIS SWEEPSTAKES. Purchase will not improve odds of winning. Sweepstakes is sponsored by HarperCollins, 10 East 53rd St., New York, NY

10022. Open to legal residents of the U.S. (except Puerto Rico) who are age 18 or older at the time of entry. One entry per household. Entries must be received before the July issue is available online, which will happen around June 25, 2015.

Winners will be randomly selected and noti;ed by mail on or before August 1, 2015. The value of the prize is $14.99. Void where prohibited. Winners are responsible for all applicable federal, state and local taxes. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. Employees of Costco or HarperCollins and their families are not eligible.

FR AN C E FRE EM A N

Pennie Clark Ianniciello,

Costco book buyer Pennie’s pick

Wiley Cash invites us to visit

A Land More Kind Than Home
Where the heart lies

C O ST C O P H OT O S T UDI O

IN AN IDEAL world, we would all read Wiley Cash’s debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, while sitting on the front porch with a sweet tea in one hand and a devoted mutt at our feet. Not that one needs to be living in or fully ensconced in Southern culture to appreciate the story of 9-year-old Jess Hall. One Sunday Jess watches as his autistic brother is called into a little church in their small town. No one will talk about what happened inside the church; at the heart of the mystery is a snake-handling ex-convict turned preacher with an unknown past.

Told in three distinct voices, A Land More

Kind Than Home blends
suspense, family drama
and small-town dynamics
into an example of power-
ful storytelling at its
;nest. (Item #898785, 6/1)
For more book picks,
see page 71.
who is intensely attached to his autistic older brother,
Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump.
When Stump catches a glimpse of something in the
window he shouldn’t see, catastrophe strikes—and
the entire town must come to terms with a gothic mix
of religious faith and human frailty.
The second perspective is pro-
vided by the town’s midwife,
Adelaide Lyle, who witnessed a ques-
tionable act in the town’s church a
decade before. And finally we experi-
ence the story through the eyes of
Sheriff Clem Barefield, who faces his
own dramatic past to get to the root of
what’s happened to Jess’ family.
Hailed as a masterpiece by many
critics, the novel quickly became a
New York Times Editor’s Choice and
a Notable Book of 2012. It also won
the 2013 Southern Independent Booksellers
Alliance’s Book Award for Fiction of the Year and
the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award from
the UK’s Crime Writers’ Association.

On its heels came Cash’s second national best-seller, in 2014, This Dark Road to Mercy, which has been optioned for film.

Cash, his wife and their new baby daughter are back home in North Carolina—Wilmington, this time, where the 38-year-old writer is at work on his third book, the title of which he’s not quite ready to disclose. While he couldn’t be happier about his accomplishments, Cash still doesn’t know if being a fiction writer is a sustainable career.

“Even when you hit the The New York Times best-seller list, you never know if you’ll sell another book,” admits Cash, who has supplemented his income by teaching fiction at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Fiction and Nonfiction Writing at Southern New Hampshire University. “My goal is to write full time and teach sometimes for fun. But if I need to flip burgers to support my family, I’ll do it.”

The one moment in his career that will always stand out, he says, is when his agent called to tell him he had sold A Land More Kind Than Home.

“It was around 6 p.m., and I immediately called my wife, Mallory—whose support has made this all possible—to thank her,” Cash explains. “We acknowledged right then and there that what would happen next was out of our control. But this moment of celebration, we’d have forever.” C