Attica Locke's novel, "The Cutting Season"

Locke’s novel is a superb, multilayered, historical/mystrey/thriller. If you like female heroes, courageous but troubled single mothers, African-American history, Louisiana and the trouble caused by the discovery of a dead body, you will love this book. The story protagonist, Caren Gray is a law school drop-out who returns to the sugar plantation-turned tourist attraction where her mother worked and where she spent her childhood. Branded as a failure by the father of her nine year old daughter, Caren is not so much a quitter as she is a person that wants to impose her will on her own life story instead being subject to the wills of others. Her troubles are compounded when the body of a latina migrant worker is found in a ditch alongside the road that divides the ancient  plantation grounds from the cane fields. It is also rumored that the slave quarters that still stand are haunted by the ghosts of her ancestors. I highly recommend this book.

–Edgar

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