When Ranger drags Darren Mathews through rural East Texas in his truck, he discovers amazing things on the roadside. A house that looks like Monticello, the estate of founding father Thomas Jefferson, a lighthouse towering out of a cornfield, giant gingerbread houses. Or a barn with Donald Trump's face on it.

This is the only time that the US President is mentioned in Attica Locke's "Bluebird, Bluebird". And yet, the novel by the black US writer reads like a snappy commentary on the changed climate since the election, on suppressed racism, which is pushing to the surface again. Locke had completed her novel long before November 2016. No word changed her after the election of Donald Trump, Locke said in an interview. And yet her book was suddenly not the same.

What she means by that, she told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "She wrote a book about racism in the South of the US, but hoping to tell a story about something that was about to disappear." Already during the Obama years a racist rhetoric had been developed and more violent attacks had taken place. But it was not until Trump's time, Locke says, "that the bitter truth about racial hatred and racially motivated violence has come to light". So her book got an unexpected urgency, so be predictive that it was scary. Even you yourself.

Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times / Polar Publisher

Attica Locke

Attica Locke lives in Los Angeles, where she most recently worked as a producer and author for the television series Empire, but hails from East Texas, where her family has been at home for generations. "Texas has given a lot to my family," says Locke. "And I can not hate where I'm from, but Texas breaks my heart, too." And so "Bluebird, Bluebird" reads like a recapture to their homeland, like a love letter to somebody who keeps disappointing you and you can not let go of it - tearful and bittersweet like the blues music that is omnipresent in this novel.

The preschool is called "Krestmont Kiddie colleague"

Locke lets her story play in the fictional little town Lark. 178 inhabitants, a few houses and huts on Highway 59, which leads from South Texas to the far north, "paved hope" for the blacks of the area, who have always gone to the north to find a better life. Those who have stayed meet at "Geneva Sweet's Sweets", a café serving the best dumplings, a $ 10 haircut and a jukebox.

On the other side of the street lies the "Ice House", when a black man enters, he is asked by the waitress if he has gotten lost. Racism is commonplace in Lark, but mostly subliminal perceptible. Texan courtesy means for whites to "stop the ladies at the door and never use the word nigger in mixed company".

And you like to drink your coffee in stores called Kay's Kountry Kitchen, abbreviated KKK. Such allusions to the Ku Klux Klan are perfectly normal in Texas, says Locke. Radio stations call themselves KiKK FM, Copyshops Kwik Kopy. The pre-school she used to go to in Houston was named Krestmont kiddie colleague: "Texas is full of contradictions," said Locke.

Much expected, a lot done

The fragile peace in Lark threatens to break when two bodies are found within a few days. First a black lawyer, seemingly just passing through, then a young white woman from the area. Strangely enough, the Texas Ranger Mathews says: "The stories from the South were usually told in reverse order: a white woman who had been killed or otherwise harmed, real or imaginary, followed, like the Sun's moon, the death of a black man. "

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Attica Locke:
Bluebird, Bluebird

From the American by Susanna Mende

Polar publishing house; 280 pages; 20.00 euros.

Order at Amazon. Order from Thalia.

Mathews is convinced that there is a racist motive behind the murder of the lawyer, whose main suspects are members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a well-organized group of racist drug and arms dealers who speak in the "Ice House". For a long time, the Ranger overlooks another trail that leads deep into the past into a complicated web of love, jealousy and hatred.

Locke dares a lot at once: a tricky thriller, a family saga, several love stories, a statement with racism, a tribute to their homeland. That could easily have gone wrong, but it is not. For "Bluebird, Bluebird" she got the Edgar - the world's most important detective award - as the best novel of the year. Attica Locke knows from the beginning what her hero has yet to learn: Life is too complex for simple solutions. And not just in East Texas.