I told my dear friend Cate Poe that I would share my reaction to reading Attica Locke. Cate has never steered me wrong with a reading suggestion & she did not fail to deliver with Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird.
This is a gem of a book for anyone who enjoys well written, well
crafted mystery & detective novels.
It reads, as more than one reviewer has pointed out, like a classical
blues song.
Bluebird, Bluebird is the first of two in Locke’s Highway 59 series. Most Texans know that part of 59 runs across
East Texas, from the border at Laredo & winding up at the Arkansas border. And
along the way, there are dozens & dozens of small towns embedded between
cities.
Locke draws on her own family history in this novel. Although it isn’t necessary, if you choose to
explore this read, I recommend all potential readers to google Attica Locke
& read her family story.
Locke’s family story was not anything I ever learned in all those
years of Texas History in public school – not even the required course in
college.
Both my parents were born & raised in small East Texan towns. I was born in Dallas, but I traveled with my
parents to places like Canton & Tyler & Lake Jackson. My accent was so deep East Texas that Papa
Field, the speech teacher at Coronado High School in El Paso gave me a list of
phrases to read & record on a cassette & then reviewed them until my
accent was completely neutralized.
As a native East Texan & someone who has lived & traveled
along the 59 corridor for decades, with only two short deviations to northwest
Houston & Washington, D.C., this novel is rich with personal recognition &
memory.
I have been to that single street light in the center of Cold
Springs. I have been to Shepard. I have been to Jasper. I have lived in a rural county bordering
Houston, when the 59 freeway tapered down from multiple lanes to two lanes on
either side of a massive field between.
So, when I read Bluebird, Bluebird, I was there. I knew the landscape, the food, the music
& too much about the rules governing small East Texas communities.
This was the only novel I have read cover to cover in one sitting
since my mother died this past August.
It was exactly the novel I needed to read. I was drawn in & completely
immersed. For the hours it to complete
the reading, I was transported outside myself & my grief, traveling down 59
& trying to solve two murders.
Locke’s characters are well drawn, the plot so well crafted that my
immersion in solving the intertwining mysteries of deaths in a small town was not enough to predict all the
details of the final solution.
Which made it enormously satisfying.
Locke left me wanting more, eager to read the second volume of this
series. Literally, she left me
hanging. In a good way.
I am picking up Heaven, my Home from the library this week.
As always, thank you, Cate.
For anyone interested in this wonderful read, or just in the
blues: check out Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Bluebird
Blues on YouTube or anything with his name attached.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muYBCO9YYNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JU2oQPCmB4
