The Nature of Things

  This is the second of Attica Locke's Highway 59 series, a sequel to Bluebird, Bluebird which I read three years ago. The books feature a Black Texas Ranger named Darren Matthews. Darren was raised by two uncles after his father was killed in the Vietnam War. One of those uncles was the first Black Texas Ranger; the other uncle was a criminal defense lawyer. Darren was all set to follow in the footsteps of his lawyer uncle until a particularly horrific hate crime impelled him to drop out of law school and go back to Texas to be a Ranger and uphold the law. But here we see him violating his oath by lying to protect an elderly man, an old family friend, who might have been arrested for murder without the benefit of that lie. His motive for lying might have been honorable but it has also landed him in a world of trouble from which he will have to try to extricate himself as he works a new case. He is based in Houston and after his last case, he has been given a new assignment of tra...

  I read Black Water Rising , Attica Locke's first novel, earlier this year and I was eager to read this one which is a sequel. I decided not to deprive myself of that pleasure any longer. Pleasantville, which takes its name from a Houston suburb built expressly for upwardly mobile Black people, is set fifteen years after the events of the first book. It is 1996 and much has happened in those intervening years. One notable event that has some relationship to the plot of this book was the closing of the venerable Houston Post in April 1994.  The money-grubbing, non-journalist owner decided to shut down with no warning to the employees. (If I sound bitter, it is only because I am.) So, by 1996, the Houston Chronicle is the only daily newspaper. Much has happened in attorney Jay Porter's life as well. He has become more widely known and successful after his victory in the Cole Oil case that the previous book recounted. But his personal life is in shambles after his beloved...

I read Attica Locke's acclaimed book, Bluebird, Bluebird , in 2017 and promised myself that I would read more. Finally, with Black Water Rising , I'm beginning to fulfill that promise to myself. This book is actually Locke's first published novel. It came out in 2009 and was nominated for all sorts of awards including the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. The book is set in Locke's hometown of Houston, Texas in 1981. We moved here a few years later and I can attest that her references to places in the city and to the culture and attitudes of the place in the 1980s ring true. Houston in 1981 was growing fast. Too fast. The city was built on a base of oil and the oil "barons" had virtually free rein in it. It was a city where a lot of people were trying to make a new start in their lives. Among them was Jay Porter. Porter was an African-American lawyer with a fledgling practice that he ran out of a dingy strip mall. His clients are mostly ...

Houston-born Attica Locke's novels are set in Texas and Louisiana and reveal an innate understanding of Southern racial and class nuances. She knows very well that it is complicated and not as black and white as those viewing it from the outside often imagine. In Bluebird, Bluebird , Locke writes of an East Texas society that is much closer to the Old South than the Wild West. She sets her novel in Shelby County, Texas, in the little towns along Highway 59. Most of the towns that she mentions - like Timpson, Center, and Garrison - actually exist, although, to the best of my knowledge, there is no Lark in Shelby County, and that's where most of the action takes place. Long ago, in what now seems like another lifetime, I was, for a while, a social services caseworker in Shelby County, and Locke's descriptions of the towns, the countryside, and the people all ring true for me. I recognize these people. Locke's protagonist, through whose eyes we see Lark, is Darren Mathews....