The Cutting Season

Contemporary Louisiana can't escape its slave trade past in Orange Prize-shortlisted author Attica Locke's second novel. It's an intriguing set-up: following the twin devastations of Hurricane Katrina and the breakdown of a long-term relationship, hotel manager Caren returns home to Belle Vie, the Louisiana cane plantation where she grew up with her late mother, cook to the plantation's white owners. Now a tourist attraction staging recreations of plantation life in the 1800s, Belle Vie provokes complex emotions in its staff, the locals and Caren herself. When a young migrant worker is found murdered by the old slave quarters, the past starts to wrestle its way into the present like a buried bone unearthed by rain.

With the plot turns of a detective thriller laid over a contemporary drama about love, single motherhood and belonging, The Cutting Season is a multi-layered novel. Despite a few obvious twists and a rather slow start, Locke entwines the two strands to compelling effect, and her characterisation is full-bodied. Bound up in the history of Belle Vie, but also needing to escape, Caren turns detective in part to break the ties that hold her, while ex-lover Eric and daughter Morgan, firmly fixed in the present, suggest a future time when she may finally be able to look forward, not back.