Heaven, My Home

Description

When the young son of an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas gang captain goes missing, Ranger Darren Matthews has no choice but to investigate the crime. Following the election of Donald Trump, a new wave of racial violence has swept the state. Dark, swampy and filled with skeletal trees, Caddo Lake is so large it crosses into Lousiana. This is deep country and the rule of law doesn't mean much to the Brotherhood, beyond what it can do for them. A further complication is that Brotherhood is squatting on the land of a former Freedmen's community, and one of the last descendants of these former slaves is actually a suspect in the possible murder of the missing boy. Instructed by his lieutenant to use the investigation to gather more evidence that might help to take down the Texas chapter of the Brotherhood, Darren is playing very dangerous game indeed.

Attica Locke is the author of Bluebird, Bluebird which won the CWA Steel Dagger and the Edgar Prize; Pleasantville, which won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction; Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award and shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and The Cutting Season, a national bestseller and winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Attica Locke has also been a writer and producer on Empire and Ava DuVernay's forthcoming series Central Park Five.

A powerful, angry, important book. Attica Locke is a major talent. -- Mick Herron, author of Slow Horses Heaven, My Home is a propulsive and compelling novel, worthy of comparisons to Walter Mosley. The story whips along towards a resolution so neat and tidy that it skates very close to cliche, but Locke's exploration of Matthews's predicament digs deep into the tension between "the impulse to police crimes against black life and to protect black life from police". It is buttressed by passages of gorgeous lyricism, with loving, elegiac evocations of Texas set alongside extended meditations on displacement, reconciliation and forgiveness, and on what "home" means in a place where it's an idea you can't "exactly touch". -- Sara Collins * Guardian * In remote rural Texas, the descendants of freed slaves share their land with some of the state's last Native Americans. Attica Locke's magnificent new novel, Heaven, My Home, is set on the side of a lake where this small community struggles to survive, encroached on by angry white men who deal in drugs and stolen goods. Into this unstable situation comes Darren Matthews, a Texas Ranger from Houston sent to investigate the disappearance of a nine-year-old white boy. Locke's novel is set in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, and shines an unflinching light on an ugly side of contemporary America. -- Joan Smith * Sunday Times * One of America's finest crime novelists ... a beautifully wrought mystery and an incisive portrait of the American South in the age of Trump. -- John Williams * The Daily Mail * a tightly plotted crime novel centring on the disappearance of a child, and a blistering look at race in Donald Trump's America. -- Sarah Hughes * iPaper * A superb thriller -- The Times The most celebrated African-American writer of crime fiction. Although her books are about the black experience in the US, they are universal in scope ... a consummate storyteller. * Financial Times * Praise for Bluebird, Bluebird: 'America's most interesting crime writer' * Daily Telegraph * Attica Locke has both mastered the thriller and exceeded it. Ranger Darren Mathews is tough, honour-bound and profoundly alive in a corrupt world -- Ann Patchett Locke's writing is both sharp-edged and lyrical. This is thoughtful, piercing storytelling with the power to transport * Financial Times * a magnificent crime novel * The Sunday Times * Locke brings freshness and vitality to a beloved form ... A powerful and dramatic look at contemporary black life in rural America -- Daniel Woodrell Mesmerising ... In this age of enduring and renewed racial tensions, we need her voice more than ever -- Esi Edugyan Bristling with rage, and yet beautifully written in its evocation of a Southern enclave still pining for its antebellum glories, Heaven, My Home is one of the most important crime novels of the year. -- Declan Burke * RTE *