A book to be savored
Award-winning author Attica Locke returns with latest lyrical crime novel

Author Attica Locke is a Black woman born and raised in Houston who was drawn to the arts at an early age and had published three books before dazzling the world in 2014 with “Bluebird, Bluebird.” 

I came upon “Bluebird, Bluebird” as an advanced reader’s copy. I read it, and stunned by the erudition, I read it again. I reviewed it, including the comment that if my house was burning, “Bluebird, Bluebird” would be one of the books I would grab. Then, the reading world watched it earn the prestigious Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America for the Best Novel of 2017.

“Guide Me Home” is Locke’s sixth literary crime novel, and the third in her “Highway 59” trilogy about Black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews. And it displays her maturity by challenging the reader to peer behind the lyrical writing to the circumstances of her 40-year-old main character. 

I read this book twice, also. And the second reading told the same story of the affective life of Mathews, the only Black Texas Ranger. But, by stealth word selection, Locke gives us views of the world through both the eyes of Mathews and his now sobered-up mother, Bell Callis. The mother abandoned her son in a haze of booze and hard day labor, busted down singlewides and husbands who died in WWII and those who didn’t. She was always working as a waitress in diners or a cleaning lady for the unctuous lunch bunch. 

I can only give you a conspectus of the few weeks of Darren’s mottled life Locke gives up – a speck of what you need as a reader, ensnarled in an East Texas Black world.

Attica Locke

Darren has been a Texas Ranger since he was old enough, pushed by the history of the men in his mother’s family who had been a Ranger or sheriff’s deputy, something he wanted since childhood. He had seen enough discrimination, intimidation and abuse in his life, and he hadn’t a moment where he thought about the power behind the badge, only the responsibility of being fair and doing what’s right. This included hiding a .38 special in his back yard that his childhood friend used to kill the murdering racist Ronnie Malvato – the right thing to do, justice being served.

Darren’s mother, Bell, turned the gun over to the police after finding it, and Darren soon became the subject of a Grand Jury investigation. It was Bell’s fault: it was her punishment of Darren, because he hated her for all the right reasons.

Due to the investigation, the now-defrocked Darren begins a downward spiral of getting drunk to insensibility night after night. Looking for some grounding on the one night he was cooking a special dinner and planning to propose to girlfriend Randie, he ruined the relationship by drinking to a raging narcosis. When he gathered his senses a night and a day and a night later, he finds a goodbye note.

Thus begins the second go-round of Darren and company. Bell, long on the straight and narrow, is awaiting Darren to come home after the shipwreck of his relationship with Randie. She implores Darren to investigate the abrupt disappearance of the new and only Black girl in the all-white sorority she cleans for. 

Darren agrees to look into the alleged disappearance of Sara Fuller from her residence in the Rho Beta Zeta sorority at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, not far up the highway from Darren’s home in Camilla.

Two girls at the sorority stiffen when this Black man knocks on the front door of the Antebellum sorority house. They insist nonchalantly that Sara Fuller had moved out days before, then usher Darren to the door, photograph him standing by his truck as a patrol car arrives to escort him to the exit. 

And thus begins the second tangent in the heretofore nearly helpless life of Darren Mathews, the former Texas Ranger. The Fuller family lives in the walled, impeccable subdivision of Thornton, with a reeking factory at the far end, an armed guard at the entrance and patrol cars circulating endlessly throughout. A strange sight in the piney woods of East Texas.

Mr. Fuller answers the door of the eerily perfect house, angered at the suggestion that he did not know where his daughter was. Mrs. Fuller meekly says that they just yesterday spoke with Sara on her only mobile phone, the one Bell retrieved from the bin behind the sorority house more than a week ago.

So here we are with a very ambitious plot line – a murder weapon found in Darren’s back yard, a Grand Jury investigation, a kvetching newly sober mother, a missing student, parents furious at Darren for investigating their missing daughter, a subdivision with perfect homes, a malodorous smokestack factory, no sign of life but heavily armed guards, and a good-guy, drunk, former Texas Ranger.

That’s all the plot line you get from me. Locke is wordy – this is a 320-page book, and I’m guessing she edits innumerable times. One might say she is a poet, now that poems don’t have to rhyme, or maybe a mystic because we aren’t sure what a mystic is. “Guide Me Home” is a book of another measure, and Attica Locke is a messenger of a kind you haven’t met. Read this book slowly, and think through the scenes, wishing you could write this well.

“Guide Me Home” is available in hardcover at Maria’s Bookshop; don’t forget to ask for your 15% “Murder Ink” discount.