The Cutting Season by Attica Locke (Adult Fiction, 2012)
This is a murder mystery that takes a deep look at the relationship and history between black, white, and hispanic Americans. 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. Caren 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.
The author astutely weaves the past and present, and shows an often unseen view of the world of forced labor. (William/Amazon) Reserve It!
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