Heaven, my home - Attica Locke

A Guardian Book of the YearAn FT Best Book of 2019 A Sunday Times Book of the YearShortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020When the young son of an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas gang captain goes missing, Ranger Darren Mathews 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 the 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 an Edgar Award; 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. She worked on the adaptation of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere and Ava DuVernay's Netflix series about the Central Park Five, When They See Us. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.

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".
Guardian - Sara Collins

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.
Sunday Times - Joan Smith

One of America's finest crime novelists ... a beautifully wrought mystery and an incisive portrait of the American South in the age of Trump.
Daily Mail - John Williams

A tightly plotted crime novel centring on the disappearance of a child, and a blistering look at race in Donald Trump's America.
iPaper - Sarah Hughes

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

The world of Highway 59 contains multitudes, rich and poor and booksmart and horse-sense smart and of many races and ethnicities. A mystery series with atmosphere, depth, and boundless compassion for its characters. Attica Lockecombines first-class procedural action with wise contemplation on our country's modern divides.
NPR

A propulsive and compelling novel . . .
with passages of gorgeous lyricism, with loving, elegiac evocations of Texas set alongside extended meditations on displacement, reconciliation and forgiveness, and on what "home" means.
Guardian

One of the hallmarks of her fiction is the insightful way she explores how black and white people can live almost entirely different experiences inside the same time and place. . . . It's a thrilling mystery, yes, but it's also a powerful meditation on what it means to be human in these frightening times.
Texas Observer

Locke once again excels in her superior storytelling.
Associated Press

Ms. Locke, a canny storyteller, ties up enough strands to satisfy readers, while leaving enough loose ends to make us eager for Ranger Mathews's next adventure in the Lone Star State.
Wall Street Journal

Scalp-prickling encore to Edgar-winning Bluebird, Bluebird.
Oprah Magazine's Must-Read Books of Fall

Bewitching story and luscious language . . . . The story has legs, the characters have character, and the dialogue has a wonderful regional tang.
New York Times Book Review

Riveting
Philadelphia Inquirer: Fall 2019's biggest books

Nuanced, moody and artful tale. . . . Locke deftly weaves a story thick with characters and conflicting motivations, in language that's sometimes startlingly lovely.
Best of Fall in Seattle Times

She manages to deliver entertainment while also immersing readers in a world where the wound of America's racial history is raw, infected and resistant to treatment.
Washington Post

It is no small thing to say that Attica Locke's novel, Heaven, My Homeis masterful. It's a quick read, not in the sense that it is short, but that it goes - and goes fast. It's a page-turner in every way.
San Francisco Chronicle