Heaven, My Home is Attica Locke's fifth novel, and the second starring Texas Ranger Darren Mathews (Bluebird Bluebird). In the time between Trump's election and his inauguration, Darren has been assigned to look into the case of a missing child. In northeast Texas's Hopetown, on Caddo Lake, Darren's mission is not exactly to find the child, but to extract a confession--truthful or not--from a member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT) for the murder of another ABT member. Darren's life is a mess: he's only just patched up things with his wife, and his mother is low-key blackmailing him in regards to the same murder.
He's conflicted in several ways. A nine-year-old boy is missing, and Darren should save him, but this is a nine-year-old racist-in-training, and that training is going well so far. Darren knows justice should be absolute and blind, but the ABT man he's being asked to frame was acquitted of another murder--of a black man--that he certainly did commit. Among the recurring questions of this novel: How far should forgiveness stretch?
Heaven, My Home is a rich, complex puzzle, with layers of characters. It's complicated, but Locke's absorbing prose, in a third person very close to Darren, keeps the reader well abreast of all the crisscrossing loyalties and betrayals intrinsic to these East Texas woods. Both a fascinating, smartly plotted mystery and a pertinent picture of the contemporary United States, Heaven, My Home is refreshing, dour and thrilling all at once. Readers will be eager for more of Ranger Darren Mathews. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia