Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020
Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; instead he found himself all alone,adrift on the vastness of Caddo Lake. A sudden noise - and all goes dark.
Ranger Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother,who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom,and she's not above a little blackmail to press her advantage. An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59,in a small lakeside town.
With Texas already suffering a new wave of racial violence in the wake of the election of Donald Trump,a black man is a suspect in the possible murder of a missing white boy: the son of an Aryan Brotherhood captain. In deep country where the rule of law only goes so far,Darren has to battle centuries-old prejudices as he races to save not only Levi King,but himself.
Publisher: Profile Books LtdISBN: 9781781257708Number of pages: 304Weight: 255 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 18 mmEdition: Main
MEDIA REVIEWS
'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.'- The Financial Times
'A powerful,angry,important book. Attica Locke is a major talent.'- Mick Herron
'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,The 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,The Sunday Times
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