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sterling8 's review for:
Bluebird, Bluebird
by Attica Locke
Popsugar 2021: a book about a social justice issue
This book is about, to paraphrase a quote toward the end of the book, "the white people whose lives revolved around the black folks they claimed to hate but couldn't leave alone". It's a book about a small Texas town with a lot of secrets- a Southern gothic. It's about a stranger coming to town and stirring up all the things that had been buried for better and for worse.
There have been two deaths in the small town of Lark, out on the eastern plains of Texas. Lark is a town so small that you could drive through it twice and not realize that you'd passed it by. One of the deaths is that of a black man, which sadly isn't as much cause for concern by the local law enforcement. But a young white woman has also died, and Darren Mathews, a third generation (at least) Black Texas Ranger, is asked to check things out by a friend in the FBI who knows that his agency can't go in without causing more problems than they'd solve.
Darren is a hard-drinking, lonely man who expects that his wife is going to leave him because he's chosen to become a Ranger rather than the lawyer he was educated to be. He understands the dangers and bigotry that are likely in play. However, when the dead man's wife comes down to find out more about what happened to her husband, she doesn't know the ways of eastern Texas and things become more dangerous accordingly. There's generations worth of resentment and pain in this little town and a lot of secrets that important people don't want told.
I enjoyed this book a lot. Some of my book club did not because the characters made some bad decisions. But these are all damaged people, damaged in generational ways, and besides, bad decisions are what makes for interesting reading. The book was atmospheric and brooding; I could picture the little cafe where so much of the action went down almost like I'd been there, it was so vivid. I'm interested in moving on to the second book.
This book is about, to paraphrase a quote toward the end of the book, "the white people whose lives revolved around the black folks they claimed to hate but couldn't leave alone". It's a book about a small Texas town with a lot of secrets- a Southern gothic. It's about a stranger coming to town and stirring up all the things that had been buried for better and for worse.
There have been two deaths in the small town of Lark, out on the eastern plains of Texas. Lark is a town so small that you could drive through it twice and not realize that you'd passed it by. One of the deaths is that of a black man, which sadly isn't as much cause for concern by the local law enforcement. But a young white woman has also died, and Darren Mathews, a third generation (at least) Black Texas Ranger, is asked to check things out by a friend in the FBI who knows that his agency can't go in without causing more problems than they'd solve.
Darren is a hard-drinking, lonely man who expects that his wife is going to leave him because he's chosen to become a Ranger rather than the lawyer he was educated to be. He understands the dangers and bigotry that are likely in play. However, when the dead man's wife comes down to find out more about what happened to her husband, she doesn't know the ways of eastern Texas and things become more dangerous accordingly. There's generations worth of resentment and pain in this little town and a lot of secrets that important people don't want told.
I enjoyed this book a lot. Some of my book club did not because the characters made some bad decisions. But these are all damaged people, damaged in generational ways, and besides, bad decisions are what makes for interesting reading. The book was atmospheric and brooding; I could picture the little cafe where so much of the action went down almost like I'd been there, it was so vivid. I'm interested in moving on to the second book.