Black Water Rising (Locke)

Black Water Rising
Attica Locke, 2009
HarperCollins
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061735851


Summary
Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His most promising client is a low-rent call girl and he runs his fledgling law practice out of a dingy strip mall. But he's long since made peace with not living the American Dream and carefully tucked away his darkest sins: the guns, the FBI file, the trial that nearly destroyed him.

Houston, Texas, 1981. It is here that Jay believes he can make a fresh start. That is, until the night in a boat out on the bayou when he impulsively saves a woman from drowning—and opens a Pandora's box. Her secrets put Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him his practice, his family, and even his life. But before he can get to the bottom of a tangled mystery that reaches into the upper echelons of Houston's corporate power brokers, Jay must confront the demons of his past.

With pacing that captures the reader from the first scene through an exhilarating climax, Black Water Rising marks the arrival of an electrifying new talent.

Writing in the tradition of Dennis Lehane and Greg Iles, Attica Locke, a powerful new voice in American fiction, delivers a brilliant debut thriller that readers will not soon forget. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Born—Houston, Texas, USA
• Education—Northwestern University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Attica Locke is an American author of several works of fiction and a screenwriter, perhaps best known for the television series Empire. A native of Houston, Texas, she graduated from Northwestern University and now lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.

Locke’s first novel, Black Water Rising (2009), was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize in the UK (now the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction). She followed that novel with three other works: The Cutting Season (2012), Pleasantville (2015), and Bluebird, Bluebird (2017).

In addition to her novels, Locke has worked in film and television. She was a fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmakers Lab, has written scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros., Disney, 20th Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, and DreamWorks.

Locke is a member of the academy for the Folio Prize in the UK and is also on the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/26/2017.)

Book Reviews
Atmospheric…deeply nuanced story…[Locke] is able to write about Jay's urgent need to behave manfully and become a decent father with a serious, stirring moral urgency akin to that of George Pelecanos or Dennis Lehane.... Subtle and compelling as it is, Black Water Rising is at times overwritten. There are endless references to Jay’s fear, nausea, timidity and general quailing, long after any sensate reader has come to understand what ails him.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


Jay Porter, a struggling black lawyer and the protagonist, is more than casually wary of the police and keeps three guns handy just in case. But then no one completely trusts anyone here. The book cleverly replaces the kind of cold-war paranoia that used to animate thrillers with racial paranoia instead.
Charles McGrath - New York Times Book Review


[W]hen a mystery plot is all knotted up and largely devoid of compelling characters or atmosphere, then it's in trouble. That's the kind of trouble Attica Locke's debut novel, Black Water Rising, lands in immediately after an engrossing first chapter.... The plot that proceeds from [its] attention-getting opening is murkier than the bayou after a crawfish convention. All of these circumlocutions would be tolerable if the characters had any heft; instead, all of them, including Jay, feel sketchy. Locke comes to mystery fiction from her career as a screenwriter....[and her] screenwriting background squeaks all too loudly in many transitional moments.
Maureen Corrigan - Washington Post Book World


(Audio version.) This extraordinary debut focuses on Jay Porter, a black lawyer in Houston struggling to become upwardly mobile while weighed down by a past as a civil rights worker who was betrayed and disillusioned. His moral fiber is put to the test when he's witness to a murder that eventually places him and his pregnant wife in jeopardy. It's a good thriller setup, but what distinguishes Locke's story are the glimpses into Porter's past, which, in turn, focus on the racial rebellions on campuses in the '60s (the author has written an upcoming HBO miniseries on the civil rights movement). Dion Graham's whispery, almost sing-song narration seems initially inappropriate, but, oddly, as the plot unfolds, this approach morphs into a mesmerizing intimacy that makes Locke's riveting prose even more compelling.
Publishers Weekly


When Houston lawyer Jay Porter responds to pressure from his wife and jumps into the bayou to rescue a drowning white woman during a birthday dinner cruise he'd planned, he has no idea of the hell he's about to enter. There's a murder nearby that same night. Jay suspects that the drowning woman was involved. Ominous threats convince him that it's bigger than just a simple murder and that the players go all the way to the top of Houston's business and political elite. Only by facing down the racially charged past that's been haunting him for years can Jay find it in himself to overcome his longstanding belief in keeping quiet instead of speaking up. Despite a slow start and a measured pace that fail to give the narrative the expected intensity, Locke's debut thriller ends in a satisfying whirlwind of drama. Deftly exploring social and economic themes during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, she balances Jay's current situation with flashbacks to his past as a student activist fighting for racial equality. Readers who enjoy Stephen Carter's thrillers (e.g., The Emperor of Ocean Park) will want to try.
Amy Brozio-Andrews - Library Journal


(Starred review) First-novelist Locke presents a searing portrait of a man struggling to reconcile the bitterness of his life experiences with the idealism of his convictions. Like Dennis Lehane, she skillfully deploys the conventions of the thriller while also presenting biting social commentary, a sure sense of place, and soulful characters. —Joanne Wilkinson
Booklist


A debut thriller about an African-American lawyer with some difficult clients and a radical past. Jay Porter smokes too many Newports; he's short on money; his wife Bernie is pregnant; and the slip-and-fall lawsuits that bolster his practice have nearly dried up as Houston heads from boom to bust in 1981. When he rescues a woman from a bayou after gunshots ring out, Jay keeps mum to the cops. His own tangles with "the Man" haunt him: At 19, only a close-call acquittal saved him from going to prison on a charge of helping to kill a federal agent. From his radical past, Jay is left with wariness and memories of a romance with white revolutionary Cynthia Maddox, who turns up years later as Houston's mayor and with whom he reconnects while representing a hooker in a civil case against an oil magnate. Jay needs the mayor's help to protect striking black union members who have come to him after being assaulted by their white counterparts. The book's three intersecting story lines promise nothing but trouble. The rescued woman is either a victim, a killer or a pawn in a scheme to damage Jay; the hooker could bring down the oilman; and the strike could bankrupt Houston. Jay, pulled into this vortex, also struggles with grim memories of his dad fatally beaten by rednecks and Black Panther allies decimated by the FBI. Locke expertly etches a portrait of her anxiety-ridden protagonist, and she animates the complex plot with the assurance of a practiced screenwriter (she's currently working on an HBO series about civil rights).
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help you get a discussion started for Black Water Rising:

1. Talk about Jay's past, as a student activist, and the way in which his past affects his present. How is Jay's idealism in conflict with his desire to keep his head down—and how does that unease manifest itself throughout the story?

2. How does Jay's "racialized disposition, his sensitive, almost exquisite sense of the world as black and white" affect his judgment? In the world of this book, is Jay's divided view of the world correct? How about in real life?

3. When Jay rescues the white woman at the beginning of the story, why does he leave her on the steps of the police station? What assumptions does he make about the entire incident—who she is, why she refuses to talk, and the consequences of his own invovlement?

4. What moves Jay to become involved in the woman's case?

5. In what way has money become "the new Jim Crow"?

6. What are Jay's feelings toward Cynthia Maddox...and what are your feelings toward her character? What about her comment that "No one understands discrimination more than I do"?

7. Jay's father-in-law, a minister, wants Jay to help the dockworkers by instigating a lawsuit in support of their cause. Why is Jay reluctant to get involved? What does he mean when he thinks he's "been there before"?

8. What are the three distinct storylines of this mystery, and how do they become enmeshed with one another to create the different layers of complications?

9. Does the book deliver in terms of being both a mystery and suspense story? Did you find yourself quickly turning the page to find out what happened next? Were you surprised by the twists and turns of the storyline? Is the ending satisfying?

10. Some reviewers feel the story contains too many distracting subplots or flashbacks, which drag down the pace of reading. Do you agree? Others feel the novel reads in parts like a screenplay. What might they mean and do you agree...or not?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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