Attica Locke will conclude her Highway 59 trilogy of crime novels with a new book coming later this year.

Mulholland Books will publish Locke’s Guide Me Home this summer, the press announced in a news release. The press calls the novel an “emotionally stirring conclusion” to the Highway 59 series.

Locke’s trilogy debuted in 2017 with Bluebird, Bluebird, which followed Darren Mathews, a Black Texas Ranger investigating two murders in the small town of Lark. The second installment in the series, Heaven, My Home, followed in 2019; in the novel, Mathews investigates the disappearance of a 9-year-old boy.

In Guide Me Home, Mathews searches for a Black college student in an otherwise all-white sorority who goes missing. He also navigates his troubled relationship with his difficult mother.

In a statement, Locke said, “When I started writing the Highway 59 book series, Trump hadn’t been elected, George Floyd hadn’t happened, there was no fear of a global pandemic. The world has changed so much, and so has Darren Mathews.…Guide Me Home is both a crime novel with a political soul and a story of a son and his very complicated mother. I hope this book gives readers the gift it’s given me—a way to process the complicated times we’re living in.” 

On the social platform X, Locke posted a video of her unboxing galley copies of the novel. “Here we go, here we go,” she says with a smile. “Oh, my God. It’s a real book. OK, let’s do this thing.”

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.