Everything you need to know about "Cherry"

The story

Cleveland, 2003. A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and Ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York and he flunks out of school and joins the Army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq. But as an Army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die. He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at – robbing banks.

Hammered out on a typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America. (source: www.bookbrowse.com)

Writing

Walker has been in a federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky, for bank robbery since 2013, and is scheduled to be released in November 2020.Walker wrote the book on a typewriter over the course of several years.

Reception

The book was published to positive reviews and “near-universal praise” as per the review aggregator website Book Marks and Vulture.com, respectively.Book Marks reported that 54% of critics gave the book a “rave” review, whilst 31% of the critics expressed “positive” impressions, based on a sample of 13 reviews. It debuted at number 14 on “The New York Times” bestseller list.

Locations of the story

Movie Adaptation

Due to Walker’s imprisonment, his consideration of offers to adapt the book into a film took longer than usual when he exhausted his allotted phone time.Days after the book’s publication, the movie rights were acquired for $1 million by Joe and Anthony Russo’s studio AGBO, with the brothers planning to direct and produce, and the script to be written by Jessica Goldberg.In March 2019, it was confirmed that Tom Holland will take on the lead role.Filming is scheduled to begin in October 2019. Netflix are in early talks to distribute the film. Ciara Bravo, Bill Skarsgård, Jack Reynor, Jeff Wahlberg, Kyle Harvey, Forrest Goodluck and Michael Gandolfini were added in October.