Bluebird, Bluebird

Attica Locke

Sep 2017 · A Highway 59 Novel Book 1 · Hachette Audio · Narrated by J. D. Jackson

About this audiobook

A "heartbreakingly resonant" thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy-winning Fox TV show Empire (USA Today).

"In Bluebird, Bluebird Attica Locke had both mastered the thriller and exceeded it."-Ann Patchett

When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules -- a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.

When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders -- a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman -- have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes -- and save himself in the process -- before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. From a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire, Bluebird, Bluebird is a rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas.

Ratings and reviews

Another great novel by Attica Locke. I've been living in Texas for about 5 years now. I grew up in New York. There is tension in the South that I normally wouldn't feel up north. When you read an Attica Locke novel, it paints a picture of the racial relations between black and white folks. The old feelings from way back in them slavery days make their way to today. Darren Mathews is right, his ancestors built this land and its just as much his home as anyone else's.

About the author

Attica Locke is the author of the Highway 59 novels, which include 2018 Edgar Award winner Bluebird, Bluebird and Heaven, My Home; Pleasantville, which won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was long-listed for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction; Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award; and The Cutting Season, a national bestseller and winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.

She is also a television writer and producer, most recently for When They See Us and the upcoming adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.