Guide Me Home is the third (and possibly last?) book in Attica Locke’s Highway 59 series, centred around Black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews and the communities and landscape of East Texas. The first book of the series Bluebird, Bluebird, won a slew of crime fiction awards, the second Heaven, My Home was equally powerful, set in the weeks after the election of Donald Trump and flagging the changes that this was bringing.
Guide Me Home is set three years later, in 2019 and the:
…fever dream that has been the years since Donald Trump was elected. Years that had laid bare the fragility of democracy… It was all a house of cards. Smoke and mirrors. Just marks on parchment. With holes you could drive a truck through. And a talented huckster got behind the wheel of one and drove it straight to the White House… The ground had gone out beneath us. We were floating in a mad world without guardrails.
In this environment, unable to effectively do his job anymore, Darren Matthews decides to hand in his badge. But before he can put his feet up and propose to his girlfriend Randie, his estranged mother Bell appears. In Heaven, My Home Bell had tried to blackmail Darren by threatening to send a gun that he had hidden (to cover up the murder of a white supremacist) to the District Attorney. Turns out she carried through with her threat and this action that might still see Matthews sent to jail as an accessory. Bell tells Matthews that she has become sober and wants him to help her find Sera, a Black girl who has disappeared from her otherwise all white sorority. After a spectacular bender, Matthews swears off alcohol and reluctantly agrees to help, despite the fact he is no longer a serving Ranger.
Guide Me Home is ostensibly about Matthews’ investigation into the missing girl. And while Locke has things to say through this aspect of the plot, it feels like a feint to allow Matthews to reconnect with his mother and uncle and to understand and come to terms with his family history. A history that he has been lied to about since he was a baby, removed from his mother and raised by his father’s brothers ‘for his own good’. There is plenty of poignancy and heartbreak here, as the truth of Matthews’ past slowly emerges.
But much like the previous two books in this series, Guide Me Home is also an angry book. Locke does not hide her disdain of the way the poor and dispossessed are treated in Texas. Joseph, the father of the missing girl has become a Trump supporter because he felt let down by Obamacare, even through, as Locke points out, the failure of Obamacare in Texas was down to the Republican State Governor:
“It’s Texas that played funny with the way the whole deal rolled out in the state, making it harder for poor folks to get help with health coverage.”
It was true, Darren thought.
It was his beloved state that had let down folks like Joseph and Iris Fuller.
The girl’s family live in a gated, controlled factory community called Thornhill. Thornhill provides schools, shops and medical care but the people end up living in what is essentially a form of indentured servitude. Nevertheless, this is a model that the owners of Thornhill are trying to spruik to both sides of politics and one that, despite knowing all the pitfalls, appeals to Matthews’ mother.
In amongst all of this is Locke’s clear love for Texas, its landscapes and its people. Locke is angry and she surfaces these issues not to complain but because she wants things to be better for all of these people. And Locke once again effectively uses a page-turning, revelatory piece of crime fiction centred around a flawed but relatable character to make her case.
Guide Me Home by Attifa Locke
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