The Cutting Season
Attica Locke
2012, 374 pages
Fiction
Caren Gray, who grew up at Belle Vie when her mother was the cook in the plantation’s kitchen, has returned with her 9-year-old daughter to manage the tourist attraction overlooking the Mississippi. When a body turns up in a shallow grave on the grounds, the question is, who is the victim and who killed her? Was it someone from the migrant community working in the neighboring cane fields, one of the Caren’s employees, one of the estate’s owners or someone else? As the investigation progresses information is discovered about an old mystery relating to Caren’s ancestor Jason, a freedman living at Belle Vie who disappeared in 1872. Is there a connection to the murder?
This is a mystery that unfolds through the history of a sugar plantation from slave times to corporate agriculture of present times. With many interesting characters and the backdrop of the historical setting, I was hooked from the beginning. This is Attica Locke’s second novel, following Black Water Rising.
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