By Attica Locke
So much more than "just" racial tensions in small town America!
I picked up Bluebird, Bluebird on recommendation and am so glad I did. Attica Locke's novel about Darren Matthews, a black Texas Ranger, was winner of the 2018 Edgar Award for Best Novel. Read or listen to the story and it is easy to see why: great plot, believable characters, gripping story, drama, and suspense. Locke will help you see and feel race, love, injustice, and (for me) calling.
If Darren Matthews played with a chip on his shoulder, I'd spot it, but he doesn't. He serves out of calling -- and that brings the issues he fights for into sharper perspective; it makes the stakes more compelling; it makes the story more gripping.
Matthews heads to Lark, an East Texas town divided by race, to help solve a double murder: white woman, black man. Matthews, who is fighting his own troubles, discovers prejudice aplenty, including his own, but he's not about to stop. His pursuit leads him to the killer and leads us to challenge our own prejudices.
Read Attica Locke's Bluebird, Bluebird. It's highly entertaining. Much more than that, I think you'll feel the importance of a calling, the reality of poverty, and the ugliness and injustice of racial inequity -- and you'll experience it through a stirring and intense story.
As for me, I'm onto Locke's first novel, Black Water Rising.