{
"item_title" : "Guide Me Home",
"item_author" : [" Attica Locke "],
"item_description" : "In this stunning culmination of the award-winning Highway 59 trilogy, Detective Darren Mathews is pulled out of an early retirement to investigate the case of a missing black college student from an all-white sorority--and soon finds a town that will stop at nothing to keep its secrets hidden. Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn't sure he's been a good cop, but believes he's got a shot at being a good man--if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It's a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn't hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who's always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn't missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth--and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate. Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera's family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he'll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again--his mother. In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, set three years after the events of Heaven, My Home, Darren reckons with his life's purpose as he's forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Amazon Books, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, and Crime Reads",
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In this stunning culmination of the award-winning Highway 59 trilogy, Detective Darren Mathews is pulled out of an early retirement to investigate the case of a missing black college student from an all-white sorority--and soon finds a town that will stop at nothing to keep its secrets hidden. Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn't sure he's been a good cop, but believes he's got a shot at being a good man--if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It's a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn't hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who's always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn't missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth--and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate. Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera's family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he'll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again--his mother. In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, set three years after the events of Heaven, My Home, Darren reckons with his life's purpose as he's forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Amazon Books, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, and Crime Reads
The finale of Attica Locke’s beloved Highway 59 series starts with a shocker: Darren Mathews, the deeply moral, and deeply complicated, Black Texas Ranger hell-bent on destroying the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, turns in his badge.
Darren is worn down. A wily district attorney has relentlessly pursued his prosecution for a lie Darren told to protect an elderly Black man. Worse, the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president has left Darren in a state of utter despair, with his alcoholism “shaking him from the inside out.” Even with a stable girlfriend (whose presence will make fans of the series cheer), Darren is hurtling toward a breakdown when an unexpected source tells him about a Black teenage girl who has gone missing from a bizarre, dystopian community called Thornhill.
Both 2017’s Edgar Award-winning Bluebird, Bluebird and its follow-up, 2019’s Heaven, My Home, force Darren up against society’s worst humans. But his most needling nemesis is not the Aryan Brotherhood, corrupt lawmen or plain old everyday racists. It’s his manipulative mother, Bell, who abandoned him to his uncles in his infancy. Guide Me Home changes the story by making Bell the Dr. Watson to Darren’s Holmes. It’s an uneasy truce, and readers will sympathize with both characters in equal measure as they unravel the Thornhill mystery.
Many mystery fans are willing to overlook hackneyed turns of phrase and oft-used literary tropes for a walloping plot. But with Locke, there’s no need. Her language is precise, refreshing and often beautiful. The close third-person point of view immerses readers in Darren’s pain and confusion as the ghosts of his family emerge, including that of the father who died before Darren was born.
Guide Me Home isn’t a standalone novel; readers new to the Ranger will want to start with Bluebird, Bluebird and proceed chronologically to appreciate the literary triumph that is the Highway 59 series.
