Excerpt from Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He just wanted to be home.

He heard the clicking again. And then the engine died a death quicker than any he'd imagined possible. No gurgling last breaths, like the gunshot victims he saw on TV, none of the babbling nonsense of Pappy's last days—rambling sorries and sorrows over his friend Leroy—just a silence so stark he felt it in his chest. He realized he was holding his breath, waiting on the engine to hum again. But it was dead and cooling by the minute. Between here and home, he saw no other boats; the fishermen, pleasure cruisers, tourists with their kayaks, they were all gone. Help. It could have been a whisper or a scream, and it wouldn't have mattered. He was out here alone, and he knew it. If he kept due west, he would eventually reach the shores of home. But all he had for forward motion was the rotted oar, and he didn't trust he wouldn't turn himself in circles and end up drifting halfway to Louisiana. No, he should stay right where he was till morning. In a few hours, surely Ma or Dana would borrow someone's boat and come looking for him. He could make it that long, couldn't he, if he didn't lean so much as a fingernail over the side of the boat, where even now he could feel the wildlife that was burbling beneath the water? He felt something bump into the back of the boat. Gator, he thought, and flat-out panicked, jerking upright, standing even, as if he thought he could outrun it. The boat tipped again, taking on even more water, and now it was nearly up to his ankles. Up ahead, he saw something.

It was a black shadow floating toward him.

He thought he heard the low hum of an engine.

But couldn't be sure he hadn't imagined it, that he wasn't just a little bit losing his mind out here. A night in the Caddo Motel. His every thought was bent away from this coming reality. A light clicked on and shone in his eyes as the shadow neared. Levi remained standing, waving his hands over his head, tilting the narrow boat this way and that. It rocked so much that it threatened to tip over for good. But Levi was desperate now, willing to risk capsizing if it meant being saved. "Here," he called, the sound like a single drop of water on cotton as the Spanish moss ate the words out of his mouth whole, needing the cries of lost souls as sure as it needed the blood of the bald cypress to survive in the swamp.

Part One

1.

THE NIGHT Darren Mathews broke into his mother's trailer, he hadn't had a drink in over a month. Well, nothing more than a beer or two once or twice a week—and always in front of his wife, holding her gaze a few seconds before taking a sip, giving her a chance to speak or hold her peace, and grateful every time for her silence on the matter. In this new, highly precarious phase of their marriage, she had made her concessions, and he had made his. Their home life had stabilized, anchored against the rough waters since their separation and his time in Lark, Texas, by the simple pleasure of good sex, by its power to pluck out the best memories of a marriage for display and make you forget the ugly ones, the damaged plums hiding at the bottom of the bin. He'd forgotten how good it felt to fuck his wife, frankly, the ease with which the act braided together two souls. He'd forgotten how safe he felt with Lisa, how much his sense of himself rose and fell on the waves of her love and attention. And being wanted by Lisa—her near-constant reach across the sheets these days—had shifted the balance of power between them in ways that were new to Darren, who'd spent their entire courtship and marriage feeling like he was always chasing, convincing, winning over. Now it was Lisa who daily did what she could to please him, to be worthy.

She knew he almost hadn't come back to her, knew a life alone at his homestead in Camilla was an option for him, knew some part of his soul could live the rest of his days and die on the land of his ancestors; he preferred a night on the back porch in Camilla, spotting bucks nosing in the surrounding woods, to any convenience the city of Houston could offer. He was a country boy still.

Excerpted from Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke. Copyright © 2019 by Attica Locke. Excerpted by permission of Mulholland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.