"Michael Farris Smith is one of the best writers of his generation, and this very well may be his best work" — Tom Franklin

In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, Desperation Road is set in a rough-and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect and collide.

For eleven years, the clock had been ticking for Russell Gaines as he sat in Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta.

His time now up, and believing his debt paid, he returns home only to discover that revenge lives and breathes all around.

On the day of his release, a woman named Maben and her young daughter trudge along the side of the interstate under the punishing summer sun.

Desperate and exhausted, the pair spend their last dollar on a motel room for the night, a night that ends with Maben running through the darkness holding a pistol, and a dead deputy sprawled across the road in the glow of his own headlights.

With dawn, destinies collide, and Gaines is forced to decide whose life he will save — his own, or those of the woman and child?

Desperation Road is a gripping, guttural thriller of redemption and human frailty. It is due to be turned into a film of the same title starring Mel Gibson.

Praise for Desperation Road:

"Smith is a meticulous craftsman who evokes his protagonists and their world with patience and subtlety" — Publishers Weekly

"Outstanding" — Ron Rash

"As rich and alive and wounded as any you'll find in contemporary fiction" — Wiley Cash

"Both poetic and brutal, Desperation Road is a gorgeous and violent book." — Ivy Pochoda