HEAVEN, MY HOME is the second in Attica Locke’s Highway 59 series, the sequel to BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD continues the story of Texas Ranger Darren Mathews. Still tortured by the events in the first novel, and dealing with his strained relationships with his wife and his manipulating, blackmailing mother, Mathews investigates the disappearance of a 9-year old boy. The boy, the son of a white supremacist, has gone missing on Caddo Lake near the town of Jefferson but his family, especially his wealthy grandmother, seem more concerned with the land owned by an old, black man, quickly a suspect in the boy’s presumed death, than in the fate of young Levi King. Darren is conflicted too, protective towards the accused Leroy Page, about whether finding the boy will lead to another extremist in later life, about whether he can exploit the situation to implicate the boy’s jailed father in the murder from the first book in which Darren himself is implicated.

The story is full of racial tension and Attica Locke perfectly captures how the election of Donald Trump has made the Aryan Brotherhood more confident and how the ‘there are bad people on all sides’ rhetoric has impacted society, demonstrated in the FBI’s desire to portray the boy’s disappearance as a ‘hate crime’ against white people, conveniently ignoring the hatred of black, and native American, people openly displayed by the boy’s stepfather and his hangers-on. But the author is not afraid to show Darren Mathews’ own flaws and prejudices and this makes the story more authentic, the characters more fully rounded.

Like the blues music that the book is steeped in, there is a lot of pain and not a lot of humour in the story but, like the blues, it is cathartic and real - HEAVEN, MY HOME really should come with a soundtrack - and the music is reflected in the lyrical prose -

“Her voice was husky, like aged molasses that had crystallized and developed sharp edges.”

“Cypress trees, their trunks skirted so that they appeared like the shy dancers at a church social, leaving enough space for God between them...”

It’s gorgeous, rhythmic writing and, thankfully, the ending would suggest that there is more of Darren’s story to come.

This is the second instalment in the Highway 59 series; readers would be advised to read Bluebird, Bluebird before picking up Heaven, My Home since there is a great deal of overlap and the latter takes place shortly after the end of the former.

Darren Mathews is a black Texas Ranger who is sent to Jefferson in east Texas because a nine-year-old boy has gone missing. Levi King is the son of Bill “Big Kill” King, a prominent Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT) member currently imprisoned for drug charges. Mathews’ task is not so much to assist in the search for Levi but to learn anything about the ABT which could be used in an indictment against the organization. Many people think that Levi was killed, and Leroy Page, a black man, soon becomes the main suspect. Darren is not convinced and tries to uncover what really happened to Levi.

The novel is set just after the 2016 election of Donald Trump. There is concern that the incoming administration will have little interest in pursuing charges against white supremacists so there is an urgency to getting as much information about the ABT as quickly as possible. There are repeated references to the election: Darren “marvelled with befuddled anger at what a handful of scared white people could do to a nation . . . white voters had just lit a match to the very country they claimed to love – simply because they were being asked to share it.” There is also repeated reference to a spike in racial violence in the wake of the election: “There had been more than fifty incidents of hate-tinged violence across the state in the four weeks since the election.”

Darren regularly faces racism, even when he is wearing his badge. Some of the incidents are difficult to read. What is interesting is that Darren has ingrained prejudices of his own. He admits to having “blind spots when it came to black folks, the feelings of deference that shot up through him like roots through fertile soil – the instinct to protect and serve that came over him around black folks, especially those of advanced age, men and women whose challenges and fortitude had made Darren’s life possible.” He tends to equate all older blacks with his uncles who raised him and “were men of truth, in all things.” Unfortunately, Darren’s biases mean that he is not always able to be objective.

Darren is a complicated and flawed protagonist. His personal life is in turmoil; his relationships with his wife, mother, uncle, and best friend are all in upheaval. He wants to remain loyal to his upbringing, profession, and spouse, but struggles. His decision to protect a black man in Bluebird, Bluebird means he has broken the law and so put his career in jeopardy. He has also left himself open to blackmail. He finds himself asking “Could there ever be honour in lying” and feeling “unsure of who he was half the time or what he believed.”

The book is rather pessimistic. Darren is hopeful about Levi if he is found alive, not convinced that his future can “be divined from the leaves of his family tree,” but others imagine that if he is alive, he will, in short time, become “a homegrown terrorist” and “a man-child with SS bolts inked on his wrist.” Darren actually admits that his job has left him pessimistic that “the Brotherhood and what it stood for would ever truly be eradicated. There were too many of them; in tattoos or neckties, they were out there. Everywhere. The country seemed to grow them in secret, like a nasty fungal disease that spread in the dark places you don’t ever dare to look.” Also ominous is Darren’s comment: “’Can’t have all the hate talk out there and it not end up in violence some kind of way. It’s just human nature. You talk it enough and it carves out a path of permission in your heart, starts to make crazy shit okay.’” Considering the recent mass shooting in El Paso, this comment resonates with truth.

There are many unresolved issues at the end of the book, so I can only assume that there will be another book in the series. I do not always like Darren’s choices, but I have empathy for him and so want him to be able to extricate himself from his dilemmas. I will definitely be looking for the next instalment.

Note: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

There is no doubt that Locke is a truly gifted crime writer. A complex, well crafted story that takes off where Bluebird, Bluebird ended. This is not a stand alone and if you start with this one you might find it hard to catch up. Filled with racial tension, a mystery and a fine set of characters, this series is tense and well written.

When Levi King, the young son of an Aryan Brotherhood leader, goes missing, Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is sent to the shores of Caddo Lake in East Texas, along the Texas-Louisiana border, not so much to look for the boy, but to look for opportunities to take down more of the Aryan Brotherhood. In fact, it seems except for the boy’s mother and father, who is in prison, no one is terribly concerned about the child. A fellow ranger envisions how prosecuting someone for killing him might shift political winds. Levi’s grandmother seems almost bored and annoyed by the investigation. She has fish to fry.

As a Black man, Darren wonders whether trying to save Levi is just trouble for the future, particularly after discovering Levi has harassed the Black man who owns the land Levi’s family is renting. Adding to the mystery are things that go bump in the night, historical ghosts, and contemporary grifters. This is a complex story that serves to illuminate the landmines of white supremacy and law enforcement in the Trump era.



Heaven, My Home is a complex and satisfying mystery full of moral dilemmas and ambiguities. There is some discussion of how Trump’s election will affect the Rangers and their work. There is an increase in hate crimes and violence and the group Darren works with is concerned. Darren also has some hangover worries from the first mystery in this series–but nothing that requires readers to read the first before the second. Darren feels righteous anger with the white voters who chose to burn down the country and expressed that in a couple paragraphs that were brilliant in identifying the racist hypocrisy.

The story is fair, we are given all the information as Darren learns it and are as capable of putting the clues together. I also like there were a few threads not tied into a neat and pretty bow. It’s a great book by an impressive writer.

Heaven, My Home is the second Attica Locke mystery to feature Texas Ranger Darren Matthews. “Bluebird, Bluebird” was an award-winning book that was highly recommended and was on my teetering To-Be-Read pile, AKA Mt. TBR. Heaven, My Home has moved it up closer to the top.

Heaven, My Home will be released on September 17th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

Heaven, My Home at Serpent’s Tail (UK) and at Hachette Book Group (US)
Attica Locke author site

A self-sufficient 9-year-old white boy goes missing from his boat on the vast reaches and serpentine bayous of Caddo Lake, in East Texas. His father, a leader in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, is in prison but has a reach that extends beyond its walls. The Texas Ranger assigned to investigate is a black man, Darren Matthews, from the author's Bluebird, Bluebird.

If that's not enough built-in conflict for you, the boy's grandmother is the grande dame of Jefferson, Texas, where Matthews is housed for the duration, and the boy's family was squatting on a heritage property owned by the dignified elder of a colony of freed slaves and Caddo Indians.

Attica Locke handles this setup masterfully, and treats us to most of the Grand Themes of drama: greed, xenophobia, jealousy, and the yearning of parents for their children and vice versa. But it's all so damn readable that you just plow onward, eager to find out what happens next.

I loved every minute of reading this book! Yes, I had read Bluebird, Bluebird, but it had been awhile and the details were fuzzy. No matter -- the author caught me up just fine.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance readers copy.

I loved "Bluebird Bluebird" in fact I have loved all of Attica Locke's books and this is just as good as any of them.

The characterisations are wonderful and the sense of time and place so well judged and the story line is so topical and relevant to today's troubled times. Locke immerses herself in her stories and she knows the South and its mores and prejudices so well.

The quality of writing ensured that I read this book in one go and I cannot wait for her next effort.

Highly recommended.

Attica Locke's books never lack for substance! Heaven My Home continues the story of Texas Ranger Mathews begun in Bluebird Bluebird, as he travels to the Texas-Louisiana borders to investigate a missing child, gather evidence to prosecute a racist hate group and perhaps help himself out of an accessory to murder charge. All this and a difficult marriage, mother and national politics too. Locke's slow dissection of the town, with its cypress lake, and interdependent groups is beguiling. I missed Mathews lyrical love for his hometown that leavened Bluebird Bluebird - Heaven My Home is a harder read, set in harder times.

Texas Ranger Darren Matthews struggles against rampant racism, competing egos, the family of the victim, the temptations of alcohol, and his own manipulative mother while trying to solve the case of a missing boy, who is assumed by pretty much everyone else to be dead. Readers of Bluebird, Bluebird will recognize the author’s slow-building, richly atmospheric storytelling. You think not much is happening and wish things would move along, and the next thing you know, you are totally absorbed in the story. There is an excellent, though frankly disturbing, sense of place. I was beginning to think that too much of the story was viewed through the lens of race, but the day-to-day tensions described are more real than we would like to believe. Perfect superheroes are artificial and can be boring, but I do wish Ranger Matthews weren’t quite so deeply flawed.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance digital review copy.

I am glad that I have read the prior book to this series. If I had not read it, I would have been lost in reading this book. The author did a terrible job of integrating the previous book into this one to make it understandable. I read this book because it was presented as a mystery. Too many parts were a political soapbox. Although the main character, Darren, was a most despicable, morally bereft individual, his character was a most positive aspect of the book. The trade of a guilty plea for finding a 'lost' child made no sense. Then the ending. No closure. Just 'read my next book'. The only one-star book for me this year.

Action-packed scarcely does justice as a term to describe Locke’s latest, and up-to-the-minute thriller set in East Texas among white supremacists and indigenous Native Americans. Race, slavery, property and the influence of toxic politics on the next generation are the serious themes here, but there’s all manner of other stuff too, not least the central character’s struggles with his conscience and his marriage. Episodes follow each other seamlessly and the ride is relentless, even if the final chapters offer less excitement than what comes before. Nevertheless, it’s deft and persuasive stuff, and the author is quite something.

I thought Bluebird, Bluebird was excellent. This, the sequel, is just as good. (It can be read as a stand-alone book, but I would strongly recommend reading Bluebird, Bluebird first.)

In Heaven My Home, Darren Matthews is still mired in the aftermath of his unethical but understandable behaviour previously. After a period of office work, he is sent to investigate the disappearance of the son of a convicted white supremacist killer because as a black Texas Ranger his boss thinks he may be able to glean information about the racist organisation the boy’s father belongs to. Things don’t go as planned or expected and Darren’s flawed but fundamentally noble character continues to be pulled in different directions both professionally and personally.

It’s a gripping, compelling story and again we get an unvarnished picture of the racism still rampant in some people in the USA and how it has been strengthened by recent political developments. Some of it is raw, ugly and abusive, some is more genteel but no less corrosive and repellent. There is also decency here and an excellent portrait of a (literally) backwater community and its attitudes.

I may have made this sound worthy and a bit turgid, but it’s anything but. I found it completely engrossing and an excellent read; there is some real weight to both its current comment and historical research, but both are lightly worn. It’s an excellent book which I can recommend very warmly.

(My thanks to Profile Books for an ARC via Netgalley.)

Attica Locke's sequel to Bluebird, Bluebird is simply phenomenal, confirming her growing stature in the field of literary crime, although I do recommend reading the first in the series before reading this. Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is feeling the threats and pressures of his previous actions, as his manipulative mother, Bell, blackmails him, a mother he has ambivalent feelings towards, it was William and Clayton who had raised him, but he feels an inner need to connect with Bell, even though she is taking him for a ride. His marriage to Lisa seems to have got on track again, at the price of counselling and his move to a desk bound role in the ABT (Aryan Brotherhood of Texas) taskforce run by Lieutenant Fred Wilson. In Jefferson, a 9 year old boy, Levi King, is out at night in a ramshackle craft on Lake Caddo, frightened that he will never make it home. Levi is far from being an angelic child, his father is the notorious Bill King, the head of the ABT, serving time in prison.

An apparently reformed Bill is worried about Levi's disappearance, and that little effort has been made to find him. Wilson sees an opportunity to gain valuable intel on the ABT as he dispatches Darren to nearby Jefferson, with its main industry of a tourism reselling its antebellum glory days that hadn't gone down well with black people the first time round. Old Hopetown is a dying community of blacks and native America Indians that have lived and supported each other on land owned by the elderly Leroy Page, a community facing constant harassment and abuse from white supremacists living in their trailers. Levi's mother seems convinced her son is with his rich and powerful grandmother, Rosemary King, a woman intent on freeing her son from prison but will little interest in Levi. On the assumption that Levi is now dead, Page is charged with his murder even though there is no body. In a Jefferson that is a snake pit of thieves and liars, Darren is made to feel less than welcome, the locals feel free to abuse and behave disgracefully towards him, but he is convinced Levi is alive and sets out to find him with the hope this will alleviate the problems he is facing.

Locke sets the novel in the immediate aftermath of Trump's election and a Texas in which the repercussions are being keenly felt by a despairing Darren amidst the rising tide of homegrown terrorists, racial violence, intimidation, abuse and killings. He has little expectation that the situation can be dealt with, unlike his boss, prior to the new administration taking over, there are just too many of them, an ever growing tribe of emboldened racists crawling out from everywhere and anywhere, both overt and covert. In an atmospheric, richly detailed, and well researched narrative, Locke takes us into the troubling state of small town America and Texas on the cusp of a Trump presidency, presaging much of the horror we have since seen unfold in the nation. Amidst this background, the complex mystery of Levi, and Jefferson engages and absorbs, while the flawed Darren proves to be an excellent central protagonist struggling to keep hold of a firm sense of his own identity. Superb storytelling that I recommend highly. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Let me start by saying I didn’t know this was the 2nd book in the Bluebird, Bluebird series. Even though I haven’t read the 1st book I loved Heaven, My Home and am planning on picking up Bluebird, Bluebird soon. This book kept my attention that’s for sure. I love Attica Locke’s writing and can’t wait for her next book!

I head nothing but good things about Bluebird, Bluebird but wasn't able to find a copy, and after reading Heaven, My Home, I'm going to redouble my efforts.

This book is many things at once and doesn't suffer for it. The mystery of a missing child is firmly established and interesting the whole way through, but through the eyes of Darren, the black Texas Ranger tasked with finding the boy, son of a higher up in the Aryan Brotherhood, it becomes deeper.

This is my second Attica Locke novel but it won’t be my last. It’s an excellent, atmospheric mystery that I will term “Southern noir” but it’s also a reflection on the racial tensions and hatred that still exist in our country today. Highly recommend.
This book is the second book in the Darren Matthews, Texas Ranger series. I do recommend that you read the first book Bluebird, Bluebird before reading this one.

**Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the electronic ARC I received in exchange for my honest review**

I rarely like follow ups. I should have re-read Bluebird before this because I was lost. In all though, it was an okay read.

Attica Locke’s sequel to her Edgar Award winning Bluebird, Bluebird finds African-American Texas Ranger Darren Mathews again thrust into the racial politics of East Texas.

Heaven, My Home is physically exhausting reading. Steamy, vividly evoked histories of the cypress swamps and lakes of back country East Texas along the Louisiana border pervade this mystery of a missing boy whose family connections to the Aryan Brotherhood are the menacing backdrop for this chronicle.

Again, Locke succeeds in another novel of tense story-lines and dilemmas of ethics. I’m looking forward to the next installment of her Highway 59 series.

Thanks so much to #NetGalley and # Mulholland Books for the opportunity to read #HeavenMyHome in advance of the publication.

A superb sequel by Attica Locke. Looking forward to more from this gifted and nuanced writer. Worth the read!

Let me preface this by saying that I loved this book so much that I have already ordered the first in the series, Bluebird, Bluebird, so that I can read it ASAP.

This book was wonderful. I have previously read a book by Attica Locke so I knew that I would love her writing and this book did not disappoint. She is such an amazing writer. From the way she develops her characters to the way she perfectly describes the settings, Locke paves the way for a wonderful adventure for her readers. This book was heavy; it was filled with racism and prejudice, and even as a white reader, I had a hard time understanding Darren, the main character, keep his cool while being slung racial slurs throughout the book. The rural setting and the Brotherhood associations there really made for an "othering" vibe toward anyone of color in this book.

In this story, Darren comes to a rural white town in Texas down Highway 59 where the missing white son of a Brotherhood member is suspected of being killed by a black man, Leroy Page. His true intentions there are to get in to see Bill King, the boy's father, who is in prison for murdering a black man. But after meeting the people of this town, especially Bill King's mother, Rosemary, he decides he must stay and try to find this boy and hopefully save Leroy's life in the process.

Not only did Locke hit the nail on the head with the racism in today's society, especially after Trump came into office, but she also formed a little side story of Darren and his wife, Lisa's, failing marriage. Throughout the book I couldn't decide if either of them really wanted to work on things, or if both were just continuing on because it was comfortable and familiar. Darren clearly has feelings for a woman from book #1 (I am trying to wait patiently to read that one), but doesn't want to hurt his wife by acting on them. There also seems to be a secret between his wife and his best friend that is gnawing at him.

In all, this was an amazing book. The only hard part now will be waiting for the next book in the series. Great job again, Attica Locke!

I will be posting this review to my blog and on Instagram on the pub date.

Thanks to Attica Locke, Serpent’s Tail/Profile books, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital advance copy of this novel. This is the second novel featuring African-American Texas Ranger Darren Mathews, following Locke’s Edgar award-winning novel Bluebird, Bluebird. Here, Mathews is sent to a small east Texas town where a young boy has gone missing.

Locke is a gifted writer, as evidenced by the first few pages of the novel which are a master class in description and suspense. She does an excellent job creating characters and situations that seem real. I appreciated those aspects of the novel, but I had the same overall feeling that I had reading Bluebird, Bluebird, which was that was much as I wanted to like Ranger Mathews, I didn’t like him much. It’s really hard to root for the hero of the story when you don’t find him likeable.

I think Locke is a talented writer and I look forward to reading her next novel.