Guide Me Home, Attica Locke's tense, gripping final novel in her Highway 59 trilogy, examines the political landscape of East Texas during the presidency of Donald Trump and probes the inner landscape of a Black man forced to reckon with his choices and his complicated family history.
Struggling with the ethical implications of his last case (detailed in Heaven, My Home), Texas Ranger Darren Mathews has turned in his badge. As he considers what to do next (including whether to resist the siren call of bourbon), his semi-estranged mother shows up at his house with a story about a missing college student: Sera Fuller, a Black girl who suddenly disappeared from her all-white sorority house. Though Darren knows his mother is a notorious liar, he's worried for Sera and intrigued by the case. As mother and son investigate, they turn up secrets about Sera's family, and Darren begins asking questions about his own history--the version he's heard, and the less clear-cut truth.
Locke writes with deep affection about her native east Texas, but also unflinchingly exposes its deep racism: the personal, political, and economic history that allows wealthy white people to manipulate people of color. Locke weaves together the mystery of Sera's disappearance with the fraught realities of Trump-era Texas, and explores Darren's complex feelings about the career he loves and the mother he has never truly known.
Powerful and unsettling, full of layered characters and difficult choices, Guide Me Home is a mystery for readers who appreciate nuance and resist too-tidy endings. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams