Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bluebird, Bluebird | 2017 | Attica Locke | Buy |
| 2 | Heaven, My Home | 2019 | Attica Locke | Buy |
| 3 | Guide Me Home | 2024 | Attica Locke | Buy |
The Highway 59 series by Attica Locke follows Darren Mathews, a Black Texas Ranger whose investigations take him through the small towns that line Highway 59 in East Texas. The trilogy is rooted in the author’s own family history — Locke’s ancestors lived in these rural communities, and she spent her childhood traveling the highway between Houston and the East Texas towns where her relatives still lived.
Each book drops Darren into a different community where a crime has exposed long-standing racial fault lines. In Bluebird, Bluebird, he arrives in the town of Lark to investigate two murders connected to the uneasy coexistence of Black and white residents. Heaven, My Home sends him to a lakeside town with ties to the Aryan Brotherhood after a nine-year-old boy vanishes. Guide Me Home, the trilogy’s conclusion, pulls Darren out of early retirement when a Black college student disappears from her all-white sorority. The Edgar Award-winning first novel set the standard for a series that explores how the past refuses to stay buried in the American South.