Today, I’m linking to an article in the Guardian newspaper. Attica Locke’s article, “Why did my black ancestors never leave Texas? They knew land is power”, is “is an extract of a lecture commissioned by the National Centre for Writing and the University of East Anglia for the the 2020 Noirwich crime writing festival.” If you read the newspaper article, it will link to the full lecture.
Attica Locke’s article provides the history and background for her crime novels, beginning with Bluebird, Bluebird. She tells about the connection to her other books, all of them available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/32qXHxf
Here’s the book that started it all.
A “heartbreakingly resonant” thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy-winning Fox TV show Empire (USA Today).
“In Bluebird, Bluebird Attica Locke had both mastered the thriller and exceeded it.”-Ann Patchett
When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules — a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.
When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders — a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman — have stirred up a hornet’s nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes — and save himself in the process — before Lark’s long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. From a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire, Bluebird, Bluebird is a rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas.