This was a fast read, not because of it's length but because it hooked me quickly and kept me reading until I was late to dinner. I literally read the last 80% of it in one day because I couldn't stop until I got to the end.⁣
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Darren Matthews is a Black Texas Ranger, which sets him apart from everyone in different ways. Black residents are wary of a stranger and a cop when he arrives in their small town. White folks are unsure whether to respect the badge or hate the Black man who dares to exert his authority over them. His uncle (and only surviving father figure) doesn't see a life for him in law enforcement and wants him to settle down and return to law school, and his calling has led to a separation from his wife.⁣
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Darren leaves Houston to investigate the deaths of a Black man from Chicago traveling through the small East Texas town of Lark, and a local white woman whose body washed up from the Bayou a week later. He comes up against the twin forces that drive this small town, the Black community's heart, mother and sometimes authority figure, Geneva Sweet (of Geneva Sweet's Sweets), and the extremely rich white man living in a replica of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello on the other side of the highway. The racial tension is THICK in this deep rural area in Trump's America, with both individual racism and blatant terrorism from the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas taking central roles.⁣
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Between the citizens of Lark, Houston and strangers beyond Texas, a slow history begins to unfold. Every time Locke reveals one a layer, there's another waiting below, and every time I thought I was onto the final "aha" moment, there was more to surprise and shock.⁣
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This was my first book by Locke, but I'm already going for another. She also left this wide open for a continued series. Add this to your TBR!⁣