Heaven, My Home: Book 2 (Highway 59 by Attica Locke)

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.

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.

Utterly absorbing sense of a beautiful place. Some deeply unpleasant people. I was fully absorbed and finished it in no time flat. Attica Locke said something about writing crime fiction was a way to explore people's motivations and that is why I love reading it. I look forward to more.

Great plot. Engaging characters. Beautiful writing. A real page turner but also very thought provoking. Gives an intelligent insight into prejudice and racism.

Sorry I found the story boring and couldn't finish it. To be honest it went in the bin. I don't usually give bad reviews but I found the story and characters frustrating and not worth the time investment to finish it.

Texas Ranger, Darren Matthews is back working on another case. Trump has just been elected and racial violence and associated crimes are on the increase. The race is on to try and get the situation under control before the Trump administration comes into power. Darren works for the ABT (Aryan Brotherhood of Texas) taskforce and his current investigation concerns Levi King, the 9-year old child of Bill King. Bill is the head of the ABT and a known white supremacist who is currently serving time in jail. Levi has disappeared and it is hoped that by investigating the disappearance of the son, important information about the ABT may come to light. This is the second in the series featuring Darren Matthews, the first being Bluebird, Bluebird.A very good read indeed. Although this is essentially a crime novel (and a very good one at that), the author creates such a powerful backdrop that white supremacy and race issues almost become the main event. I enjoyed this book more than Bluebird, Bluebird. Although Bluebird, Bluebird developed into a very good book, I thought it had a slow and very confusing start. It also had a cast of characters whose relationships with each other required a degree in logic to disentangle and then remember in order to follow the complex plot. Heaven, my Home has a much simpler plot, a vastly reduced cast list and a much more gripping start, all of which vastly improved things from my point of view. And all of this was achieved without compromising the very real issues which Attica Locke is so good at tackling head on. She gives real insights into the underlying attitudes of the people, and sadly I fear that these will not easily be eradicated.I was very slightly disappointed with the ending as it didn’t neatly tie up all the loose ends. Rather, it left it to the reader’s imagination to fill in some of the gaps and personally, I prefer someone else to do the work for me!!Having read the first two in this series, I am now eagerly awaiting the third. I think Heaven, my Home could be read as a stand-alone crime novel, but you may enjoy it more if you have already met Darren Matthews and his local community in Bluebird, Bluebird.