“Bluebird Bluebird” by Attica Locke

NIGHTSTANDS & COFFEE TABLES
REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“The belief that they were special, that they had the stones to endure what others couldn’t, was the most quintessentially Texas thing about them. It was an arrogance born of genuine fortitude and a streak of hardheadedness, six generations deep.”

Darren Matthews is a black Texas Ranger, dedicated to justice and plagued with being a black man in the south. He is proud of his heritage, that his ancestors had the gall to stay in a town that didn’t want them. He loves Texas because it is home, but his vantage point assures Darren sees the Lone Star State’s faults up close. The badge gives him power, but his skin color threatens the southern system of who gets justice and how. On leave from the Rangers for his suspected involvement in a homicide, Darren heads to the little town of Lark, Texas, to investigate two murders. A black lawyer from Chicago turned up dead, followed a few days later by a local white woman, an odd order of killings in East Texas. Matthews uses his anonymity to integrate in the community, blending into the still segregated spaces, where black people and white people do not mix without consequences. 

The thriller is fast paced and laced with homage to the blues culture, the beautiful East Texas landscape, and the colorful personalities that pepper roadside towns people only drive through. Lark is frozen in time, where people maintain their place, rarely challenging the racial framework of history. Darren’s presence and intent threatens the surface-level harmony in Lark and his role in the most elite and respected police force in the state. Meanwhile, his issues back home continue to simmer and threaten his current mission.

Attica Locke writes with southern charm and grit, honestly portraying people and a place she knows intimately, having been raised there. The characters are flawed, yet handled with care. Locke exposes the truth of being so ingrained in a place that one becomes a perpetuation of its resistance to change. Locke explores the underworld of Klan activity and the diligence of a colored population who refuses to abandon their birthplace. The themes of racial justice and identity unravel a generational mystery that will have readers devouring every page. Bluebird Bluebird is the first in a series of novels about Texas Ranger Darren Matthews. Attica Locke won the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for her novel Pleasantville and The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for The Cutting Season.