Just Jennifer

The Cutting Season by Attica Locke (Harper, September 2012)

Caren Gray, a single mother, is a coordinator for tours and special events at Belle Vie, the Louisiana plantation where she grew up.  Owned by the Clancy family for as long as Caren’s relatives have worked on the plantation and adjoining sugar cane farm, her mother was the cook and her great-several times-grandfather was a slave, Caren takes a great deal of pride in the plantation, in spite of its history.  When a body of a migrant worker from the adjacent sugar cane farm is discovered near the slave cabins, the police zero in on one of Caren’s employees and start Caren on a road that has her questioning her past and present.  Her daughter Morgan, entering her moody pre-teen years, may have been an unwitting witness to the murder and her father Eric, to whom Caren was never married, reappears just before his wedding, turning both Caren’s and Morgan’s lives on end.  As Caren delves into her family’s past, she learns that her present reality was shaped by events that have been altered to suit circumstances over the years.  Broody and moody, thick as the Louisiana bayous, Locke’s second book writes a murder mystery rich in atmosphere and history, with characters, past and present, who come alive in Locke’s second novel.  Here’s hoping her next novel is not far behind.