Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird was published in the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, and introduced readers to Darren Mathews, a Black Texas Ranger grappling with the demands of law enforcement in a divided society. Locke continued his story in 2019’s Heaven, My Home, and now concludes the prize-winning Highway 59 trilogy with Guide Me Home, in which Darren must confront the traumas of his upbringing, the painful contradictions of his career and an intricate web of political and judicial corruption. Locke, who was born in Houston, Texas and now lives in Los Angeles, is also a screenwriter and TV producer; her work includes adaptations of Celeste Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere and the memoir From Scratch, by her sister, the actor Tembi Locke.
The Highway 59 books are compelling crime novels, but they are also deeply concerned with the US’s turbulent politics. How important was the political aspect for you?
It was not really my intent, but once Trump was elected, and I saw what was happening to my country, and I’d written a character who was in the thick of it, I just leaned into it. It gave me a space to process my feelings about everything that I was watching and how profoundly Trump’s election had broken me. He just really undid me. It’s him; it’s the people who voted for him; it’s what he represents.
