A powerful, angry, important book. Attica Locke is a major talent. -- Mick Herron, author of Slow Horses
Heaven, My Home is a propulsive and compelling novel, worthy of comparisons to Walter Mosley. The story whips along towards a resolution so neat and tidy that it skates very close to cliche, but Locke's exploration of Matthews's predicament digs deep into the tension between the impulse to police crimes against black life and to protect black life from police. It is buttressed by passages of gorgeous lyricism, with loving, elegiac evocations of Texas set alongside extended meditations on displacement, reconciliation and forgiveness, and on what home means in a place where it's an idea you can't exactly touch. -- Sara Collins * Guardian *
In remote rural Texas, the descendants of freed slaves share their land with some of the state's last Native Americans. Attica Locke's magnificent new novel, Heaven, My Home, is set on the side of a lake where this small community struggles to survive, encroached on by angry white men who deal in drugs and stolen goods. Into this unstable situation comes Darren Matthews, a Texas Ranger from Houston sent to investigate the disappearance of a nine-year-old white boy. Locke's novel is set in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, and shines an unflinching light on an ugly side of contemporary America. -- Joan Smith * Sunday Times *
One of America's finest crime novelists ... a beautifully wrought mystery and an incisive portrait of the American South in the age of Trump. -- John Williams * The Daily Mail *
a tightly plotted crime novel centring on the disappearance of a child, and a blistering look at race in Donald Trump's America. -- Sarah Hughes * iPaper *
A superb thriller -- The Times
The most celebrated African-American writer of crime fiction. Although her books are about the black experience in the US, they are universal in scope ... a consummate storyteller. * Financial Times *
Praise for Bluebird, Bluebird: 'America's most interesting crime writer' * Daily Telegraph *
Attica Locke has both mastered the thriller and exceeded it. Ranger Darren Mathews is tough, honour-bound and profoundly alive in a corrupt world -- Ann Patchett
Locke's writing is both sharp-edged and lyrical. This is thoughtful, piercing storytelling with the power to transport * Financial Times *
a magnificent crime novel * The Sunday Times *
Locke brings freshness and vitality to a beloved form ... A powerful and dramatic look at contemporary black life in rural America -- Daniel Woodrell
Mesmerising ... In this age of enduring and renewed racial tensions, we need her voice more than ever -- Esi Edugyan
Bristling with rage, and yet beautifully written in its evocation of a Southern enclave still pining for its antebellum glories, Heaven, My Home is one of the most important crime novels of the year. -- Declan Burke * RTE *
