Editorial Content for The Cutting Season
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Caren Gray grew up at Belle Vie, happy as a child there but became ever more anxious to escape its clutches the older she got. First, school took her away, then the love of a man kept her away, and she believed she had finally made a clean break. Then, a few years ago, when her life was falling apart, she came back to the only place she felt safe, the place her family had worked for generations. They needed someone with her management skills, and she needed a job. It was only temporary, she told herself. Then years passed, and Belle Vie seemed to have gotten its hooks into Caren once again.
"Attica Locke writes with passion and grace, and her prose sparkles through every sentence. She takes a look back at racial issues with a delicate hand as she examines the frailties of relationships."
Belle Vie, an old plantation with great historical significance, now draws visitors for tours, re-enactments and private parties. Carefully maintained, its current purpose is to portray life in the mid-1800s around the time Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Belle Vie has been in the Clancy family for over a century and a half, and Caren’s ancestors had been there just as long. Caren always believed the Clancys had been good employers. Now, a seed of doubt has begun to grow.
Fiercely protective of her daughter Morgan, who is coming up on her 10th birthday, Caren feels that their home on the property provides a welcome isolation from the world’s temptations and rampant dangers. She can protect Morgan here in a way that would be more than challenging in the city. But that feeling changes when a woman’s body is found on the grounds in the early morning hours one cold day, her throat slit.
Caren was the one who discovered the body outside one of the slave cabins named for her great-great grandfather, Jason. Is there any significance to that location? Whether there is or not, Caren is thereafter drawn to explore what happened to Jason, who simply disappeared one day. His story has remained a mystery over the many years since he vanished. Maybe now she will have a chance to solve it, while she also tries to figure out what happened to the murdered woman. It wouldn’t be any of her business except that one of her actors, Donovan, a troubled young man with a difficult past, has been charged with the crime, and Caren is convinced that he’s being railroaded. But why?
When it seems apparent that her daughter knows more about the dead woman than she’s saying, Caren calls Eric, Morgan’s father, in Washington, D.C. Eric is getting married next month, but his daughter means the world to him. It is a matter of a few short hours before he rushes to help out. He is solidly a family man, so why didn’t he stay with Caren? Watching the two of them together, it quickly becomes clear that there is unfinished business between them.
As Caren is forced to rethink her future, she learns a lot about Belle Vie, its staff, Eric, and her daughter Morgan, but mostly herself. She looks for answers about her past and, in doing so, realizes a world of possibilities.
Attica Locke writes with passion and grace, and her prose sparkles through every sentence. She takes a look back at racial issues with a delicate hand as she examines the frailties of relationships. The injustices of the times are woven into her story mounting with suspense. THE CUTTING SEASON is a fine novel to follow BLACK WATER RISING, Locke’s smashing debut.
Teaser
Caren Gray manages Belle Vie, a sprawling antebellum plantation that has turned into an eerie tourist attraction. Outside the gates, a corporation has been snapping up land from struggling families who have been growing sugar cane for generations and replacing local employees with illegal laborers. Tensions mount when the body of a female migrant worker is found in a shallow grave on the edge of the property, her throat cut clean.
Promo
Caren Gray manages Belle Vie, a sprawling antebellum plantation that has turned into an eerie tourist attraction. Outside the gates, a corporation has been snapping up land from struggling families who have been growing sugar cane for generations and replacing local employees with illegal laborers. Tensions mount when the body of a female migrant worker is found in a shallow grave on the edge of the property, her throat cut clean.
About the Book
In BLACK WATER RISING, Attica Locke delivered one of the most stunning and sure-handed fiction debuts in recent memory, garnering effusive critical praise, several award nominations, and passionate reader response. Now Locke returns with THE CUTTING SEASON, a riveting thriller that intertwines two murders separated across more than a century.
Caren Gray manages Belle Vie, a sprawling antebellum plantation that sits between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where the past and the present coexist uneasily. The estate's owners have turned the place into an eerie tourist attraction, complete with full-dress re-enactments and carefully restored slave quarters. Outside the gates, a corporation with ambitious plans has been busy snapping up land from struggling families who have been growing sugar cane for generations, and now replacing local employees with illegal laborers. Tensions mount when the body of a female migrant worker is found in a shallow grave on the edge of the property, her throat cut clean.
As the investigation gets under way, the list of suspects grows. But when fresh evidence comes to light and the sheriff's department zeros in on a person of interest, Caren has a bad feeling that the police are chasing the wrong leads. Putting herself at risk, she ventures into dangerous territory as she unearths startling new facts about a very old mystery --- the long-ago disappearance of a former slave --- that has unsettling ties to the current murder. In pursuit of the truth about Belle Vie's history and her own, Caren discovers secrets about both cases --- ones that an increasingly desperate killer will stop at nothing to keep buried.
Taut, hauntingly resonant, and beautifully written, THE CUTTING SEASON is at once a thoughtful meditation on how America reckons its past with its future, and a high-octane page-turner that unfolds with tremendous skill and vision. With her rare gift for depicting human nature in all its complexities, Attica Locke demonstrates once again that she is "destined for literary stardom" (Dallas Morning News).
