Attica Locke's latest mystery is Heaven, My Home.From the transcript of her September 2019 interview at NPR:
NOEL KING, HOST: The writer Attica Locke has a new novel out. "Heaven, My Home" is about race, migration and forgiveness in Texas. Now, the story picks up with Darren Mathews, who's the same protagonist from Locke's previous novel, "Bluebird, Bluebird." Locke talked to our co-host Rachel about where Darren is in his life when we meet him in this book.--Marshal Zeringue
ATTICA LOCKE: He is a black Texas ranger who actually planned to be a lawyer. That was his plan in life. And then the way I put it in the first book, that when Jasper, Texas, happened - the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. - he said, that was my 9/11, that was my call to action, that I could wait and do things through the channels of law and courtrooms and so on, or I can put boots on the ground and become a law enforcement agent in order to do the work of protecting black life.
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: And where do we meet him in "Heaven, My Home"?
LOCKE: We are in 2016, after the election of Donald Trump. He went through a lot of crazy things in "Bluebird, Bluebird" that have put his career kind of on the line. He's always trying to navigate to what degree black folks can afford to follow the letter of the law and to what degree that justice for black folks has to be kind of improvised in such a way. So he's gotten himself in a little bit of a pickle, (laughter), in terms of trying to deal with a case against a family friend, an elderly black gentleman, who tried to...[read on]