Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is facing a potential indictment and he’s desperately holding on to his life when he receives a visit from his estranged mother who feeds him a story about Sera, a possibly missing Black college student whose white sorority sisters claim she isn’t missing at all. Darren has to determine if his mother’s story is true and he begins investigating both Sera and her shady hometown, uncovering troubling information, some of which may impact his own case.

“…the fever dream that had been the years since Donald Trump was elected,” is the time period during which this story is set and Mathews (and Locke) have a clear point of view about it. It’s one I agree with, as I think most right thinking people do, but there will likely be some who pick up the book and take exception to the politics. If you are that someone, then don’t read this, you won’t like it.

I read BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD, but didn’t read the second book in the series, and felt like I was fine and would have been OK with this as a standalone, although I was happy to have the rich backstory of Darren’s relationships with his uncles.

I’m a bit torn about this book. The language and the writing are lovely. For example, the description of the bricks of the sorority houses as different, delicious foods, loved that. Locke makes you feel, smell and taste the Texas heat and dust. But the plotting this time seemed a bit juvenile. Are people that openly racist in Texas? And Thornhill was just so blatantly illegal, most teenagers would have understood it, but tons of adults didn’t? I couldn’t buy that. So, I couldn’t entirely embrace this.