Heaven, My Home (Highway 59 by Attica Locke)

This second book in the Highway 59 series continues the story successfully and shows what an accomplished writer Locke has become. Great characterisation and attention to detail and the story moves at a strong pace.

I enjoyed this book.

Ms Locke creates a caste of finely drawn, memorable, conflicted and entirely believable characters and puts them in situations that bring out significance, drama and the stark horror of American racial relationships as experienced through the strong, manly yet extremely vulnerable and complex character of Texas Ranger Darren Matthews. The fear in the historical context of this -December 2016 - the month before the Trump presidency began, gives this great immediacy and continuing relevance. Attica Locke is a writer of unquestionable genius of the first rank. Was even better on a second read, where the prose style and breath-taking descriptions of the swamp-lands of Jefferson and Caddo Lake seemed all the more rich in poetry.

An Afro-American Texas Ranger is on the trail of a white supremacist group in a follow-up to 'Bluebird, Bluebird', with the added complication of the apparent kidnapping of a young boy. The plot is quite convoluted, unnecessarily so I feel. All the characters are humanly flawed and, as a result, are dislikeable. There's a lot of the local history about this lakeside location on the Texas/Louisiana border.

Like her previous book, Bluebird, Bluebird¸ this novel is set in East Texas and features Texas Ranger, Darren Matthews. Until I read the previous book, I hadn’t been aware that the Texas Rangers still existed, and had assumed that they had passed into legend during the period of the wild West in the nineteenth century. For Matthews, the Texas Rangers remain a serious group, and one of the principal state-wide arms of law enforcement. Matthews himself has been working alongside the FBI to investigate hate crimes, and in particular the nefarious activities of the odious yet flourishing Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, an organisation with links to various aspects of organised crime, but principally involved with neo-Nazi activities against African Americans. Matthews, himself African American and from East Texas, is asked to help the local Sheriff’s Department investigate the disappearance of a young boy who has gone missing from his community on the shores of Lake Caddo. The investigation becomes more complicated when it transpires that his father, currently in prison for a racially motivated murder, had been a key member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and the missing boy had himself already shown a tendency towards antisocial, and indeed downright racist behaviour. Tensions abound, between the boy’s family and neighbours and the small African American and Native American communities living nearby, but also between the various law enforcement agencies that become involved. The Sheriff’s Department resents having a Texas Ranger (and particularly a black one) foisted on them, while Matthews himself bridles at the subsequent involvement of the FBI. There are more wide-reaching tensions at play too, as the novel is set in December 2016, between the election and inauguration of president Trump. Attica Locke writes wonderfully. Her prose if spare and direct, but she also throws in glorious similes and metaphors. She also avoids falling into the trap of rendering her protagonist as a pillar of unassailable rectitude. Matthews is a troubled man, over whom alcoholism constantly threatens to cast its shadow. He is currently back living with his wife, Lisa, following a trial separation, but is tormented by memories of a woman whom he encountered in a previous case, and with whom he came close to an imprudent liaison. Oh, yes, and his previously estranged mother has been blackmailing him over a misjudgement he made in a previous case which could render him liable to a Grand Jury arraignment, not to mention probably dismissal from the job he loves. But apart from all that, it is just another day on the beat … Attica Locke knows how to weave an intricate plot, and to keep the reader utterly absorbed. All in all, this was another very intriguing novel.

I hold my hands up, I wasn't a huge fan of Bluebird, the first in this series, but this novel has shown me how wrong I was. I have always loved Attica Locke's novels, this I believe is her best yet. Multi layered, this novel of corruption, racism, and history is always far more than it seems. It works as a thriller, a mystery novel, and an insight into historical racist beliefs. Highly recommended, it is above all else, a thoroughly good read.

Das Buch zaubert Bilder von Texas im Kopf des Lesers. Darin eingebettet ein komplexer Kriminalfall mit Ranger Darren Matthews, der seine eigenen Wurzeln nicht verleugnen kann und mitunter seine eigenen Selbstzweifel mit einer Flasche Bourbon betäubt. Zusammen mit Bluebird Bluebird bereits der zweite Fall des Rangers und angesichts des Endes, wünscht man sich, dass die Geschichte weiter erzählt wird. Die Bücher rufen förmlich nach einer Verfilmung. Kurzum : Daumen hoch!

A thrilling novel that yanks you around, makes you dizzy, then straightens you out to see clearly. True talent that teases you and says, “Have faith; it will be all right in the end.”

This is such a good read. The story is engaging, the characters compelling, and the reflections on what the "right" thing to do is wonderfully complex. The writing is just so good, I find myself staying up late to keep going. I really care about the characters, and love that they're human and real. Also, the meditation on the importance of place that's woven throughout -- the emotional and symbolic importance, as well as the physical place of it -- from so many different perspectives, and so many different places that have different levels of importance, is beautiful.

Heaven, My Home: Book 2 is the rare crime novel that trusts the reader with complexity and tells the truth without flinching. Attica Locke opens the book inside the fear of a nine year old white boy, Levi, alone on a lake after taking a boat without permission. The motor dies. The radio cuts out. Silence thickens under Spanish moss. Before race, before politics, before judgement, we sit with pure vulnerability. A frightened child. A bad decision. Consequences closing in. That choice reverberates through the rest of the novel. Levi’s fear is immediate and personal, born of isolation and uncertainty. Later, when Ranger Darren Mathews reflects on what frightened white adults have done to the country, the contrast is unavoidable. Fear in a child calls for care. Fear in those with power, left unexamined, becomes destructive. Locke is unusually direct about the political moment she is writing into. She names Donald Trump repeatedly, refusing the safety of euphemism. Through Darren’s anger and his uncle Clayton’s blunt moral clarity, she captures the dread many Black Americans felt watching a far right wing president elected, a president perceived as excusing or emboldening Klan aligned ideology. This is not framed as abstract politics or partisan disagreement, but as a threat to safety, dignity, and belonging. One of the book’s most unsettling achievements is its refusal to sanctify forgiveness. Clayton’s insistence that forgiveness has limits cuts against the comforting idea that moral grace is always redemptive. In Locke’s hands, forgiveness becomes something that can be weaponised, a habit that allows impunity to flourish when accountability is postponed again and again. Place carries equal weight. The lake, the abandoned land, the back porch at dawn are not scenery. They hold memory, labour, exclusion, and loss. Families stay, others are pushed out, time erodes even the most carefully laid plans. The land remembers longer than people do. This is crime writing that places interior life at its centre. Marriage, desire, silence, and guilt are not side plots, they show how people seek safety when the world beyond their door grows hostile. Darren’s hope for the life of the child, his doubt about the country, his pull toward home, all sit in uneasy balance. Heaven, My Home refuses to soften fear or smooth history. It names the moment it inhabits, honours Black interior life without explanation, and allows beauty and menace to exist side by side. It doesn’t tell you what to think. It shows you what it feels like to live there.

East Texas is a hot bed of racial tension and white supremacy. Darren Matthews, a black Texas Ranger from Houston, finds himself once again in the middle of a racial mess. Nine year old Levi King, son of Bill “Big Kill” King, a captain in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas serving time for multiple drug charges in Texarkana, is missing. Some searchers have given up on locating the boy and are blaming Leroy Page, a member of the Caddo Tribe and owner of the land where Levi’s parents live. Page was the last person to see Levi alive the night Levi went missing while boating home on Caddo Lake. The lake borders the community of Hopetown,Texas. One could easily get lost and float all the way to Louisiana amid the swampy, moss filled islands and trees that fill this large body of water. The story line from Bluebird Bluebird is continued in Heaven, My Home and should be read first in order for the reader to fully grasp the spewing verbose of hatred among the all white uber racist Aryan Brotherhood and other slimy characters Locke places in this series. The hate continues with a few political barbs aimed at Trump and MAGA. A small band of Caddo Indians have lived peacefully with the black community on the land Page owns. The Caddo’s are also the recipients of the trash talk from the white low life’s who have moved trailers and vans onto the same land and are now calling it home. Ranger Matthews has been sent to Jefferson to uncover more info about “the brotherhood” but he can’t stop thinking about the missing boy. Once again we find the Ranger bending the law to suit himself as the Grand Jury case from Bluebird Bluebird is still hanging over his head. In fact, it seemed as though every officer of the law and of the court has managed to dirty their profession. This is a good mystery but the mystery of what happened to Levi, gets drawn into the mystery of the property issues as someone is trying to buy and sell Page’s land. Even though I am fascinated with Ranger Matthews, the situations he finds himself in and the way he handles them made me question how true to the badge Rangers, especially this one, actually are. I struggled with these characters and found only a couple in the entire book whom I really liked. Unfortunately, Matthews was not one of them. If there is a third book in the series, I will continue reading in the hope that Locke can find someone in the beautiful red dirt of East Texas who is law abiding and not full of hatred toward others on either side of the line she has drawn. Even with the flaws I found, both books kept me turning the page. I just wanted Ranger Matthews to be a hero. Four stars because Locke can weave a good story. Not because Matthews is a hero.