Down These Mean Streets

Heaven, My Home, the sequel to Attica Locke's 2018 bestseller, Bluebird, Bluebird, is a new mystery novel featuring Darren Mathews, the Texas Ranger who appears in both books as a type of Hercule Poirot or Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins—recurring characters in Agatha Christie and Walter Mosley's novels, respectively. Set in 2016 at the dawn of the Trump era, Heaven, My Home highlights Locke's well-constructed plot, fully realized characters, and powerful sense of place.

   Born in Houston, Texas, Attica Locke has published five novels and received an Edgar Award for Bluebird, Bluebird (2017), the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction for Pleasantville (2015), and the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for The Cutting Season (2012 ). Locke is also a screenwriter, writer and producer on Netflix's When They See Us, a recent television miniseries that focuses on the tragedy of the Central Park Five. Locke's extensive training and experience in filmmaking inform her fiction writing, enabling her to create strikingly vivid visual images of the East Texas landscape.

   Heaven, My Home's title and epigraph enhance the novel's cultural and historical contexts. One of the central conflicts in the story involves Hopetown, a small, historically black community settled by former slaves that offered a safe space, a home to remnants of a band of East Texas Caddos. Locke's title recalls slave narratives in which writers often invoked biblical references to heaven as an escape from the hardships of slavery. In a classic African American spiritual, oppressed blacks sang: "Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world; I'm going home to live with God." Additionally, the Soul Stirrers, a black gospel quartet organized in 1926, sang about their aspirations toward a heavenly home in a popular rendition of a hymn entitled "Heaven is My Home." Moreover, the epigraph, "Like a tree planted by the water,/I shall not be moved," comes from a Negro spiritual that speaks to the African American's steadfast determination in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Leroy Page, a ninety-three-year-old descendant of the slaves who first settled in Hopetown, is engaged in an armed, existential struggle to protect his heritage against the encroachment of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist group that has set up a mobile homes park on the fringes of Hopetown. Leroy leads night patrols to prevent whites from coming onto his ancestral land. Hopetown is home to a community of blacks and Caddo tribe members, but the escalating hostility between whites and blacks exposes the precarious nature of home and security for Leroy and his Hopetown friends, as they resist displacement.

   History also complicates the mission of Texas Ranger Darren Mathews, an African American, investigating the murder of a member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas and the disappearance of the nine-year-old son of a white supremacist. The Texas Rangers, an elite law enforcement agency, has a long history of racism and violence against minorities. Indeed, the first African American Texas Ranger, Lee Roy Young, was not hired until 1986, more than 165 years after the agency was created. Consequently, when Ranger Mathews conducts his investigations, his race becomes an obstacle. Not surprisingly, some whites resent his authority as a law enforcement officer; they refuse to cooperate with his investigations, and they call him the N-word to his face. Even in 2016, the old racial attitudes that defined interactions between blacks and whites in East Texas continued to engender a mutual distrust.

   Mystery, crime, or detective fiction, as it is variously categorized, is often subsumed in a larger sub-category known as popular or pulp fiction. Consequently, writers of detective fiction are unfairly dismissed as entertainers . However, Attica Locke writes in the tradition of mystery/detective writers such as Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Chester Himes, and Walter Mosley, to name a few. Indeed, the literary lineage of mystery/detective fiction can be traced back to the nineteenth century and Edgar Allan Poe's Murder in the Rue Morgue. The prestigious Edgar Award given to an outstanding mystery/detective writer is named in honor of one of America's most highly regarded authors, Edgar Allan Poe. It is interesting to note that Agatha Christie, iconic writer of detective fiction who enjoyed popular and critical acclaim, was also a recipient of an Edgar Award.

   Thematically, Heaven, My Home, calls attention to several important, relevant issues. The prominent role of white supremacists in the narrative affirms the reality of racism in America, while discrediting the myth of a post-racial America. Locke suggests that Dr. King's dream of racial equality and respect for everyone remains an unachieved goal in East Texas and elsewhere in America. Because good writers like Locke are always deliberate, I believe the fact that one family's last name is King invites readers to remember Dr. King's legacy as blacks and whites teeter on the brink of racial violence. Locke also explores the nature of innocence and forgiveness. Ranger Mathews tries to establish the innocence or guilt of someone like Leroy Page, even in the face of seemingly incriminating information, regardless of the suspect's race. His mother's abandoning Mathews in childhood and blackmailing him as he tries to solve the murder test his ability to forgive. Simultaneously, he tries to rehabilitate his broken marriage. Locke does an excellent job of managing the various threads of the plot.

   Attica Locke not only delivers a compelling, multilayered mystery, she also displays a dazzling mastery of the writer's craft, thereby elevating Heaven, My Home into the realm of art. One of the hallmarks of an accomplished fiction writer is the ability to create fresh, vibrant similes and metaphors, imagine figurative language that complements and enhances the narrative. For example, one character "stood out like an Easter Bunny at a Santa Claus convention...." In another example, discarded campaign yard signs are "leaning against a wall, their wooden stakes pointed in the air like church steeples." Heaven, My Home is replete with sharp visual images such as "a mangy dog nosing through a Hostess cherry-pie wrapper in the grass." But Locke's command of her craft is best illustrated in her outstanding depiction of Caddo Lake, the symbol of sinister, southern gothic forces that make the lake a site of fear and dread. Caddo Lake is much more than a large body of water. Like the river in T.S. Eliot's The Dry Salvages, Caddo Lake is "a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable...."

   Heaven, My Home, a skillfully written mystery/detective novel, delves into serious cultural, and political issues. Fortunately for Locke's fans, the ending of this, the second installment in her Highway 59 series, opens the door for a third volume featuring Texas Ranger Darren Mathews.

Elvin Holt is a Professor of English at Texas State University, and he specializes in African American Literature and cultural studies. He has taught at Texas State University since 1983.