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
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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
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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
Hope Katz Gibbs is a freelance writer,
author and publicist who travels
between her offices in Arlington and
Richmond, Virginia.
Wiley Cash
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