The Cutting Season

The Cutting Season is a novel by Attica Locke, published on September 18, 2012 by HarperCollins. It is a national bestseller and the first book to appear under the Dennis Lehane/HarperCollins imprint. It is the winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It was also a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, long listed for the Chautauqua Prize, and an Honor Book of the Black Caucus of ALA.

Attica Locke is a gifted writer whose first novel Black Water Rising was a nominee for the 2010 Edgar Award, the 2010 NAACP Image Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was also on the short list for an Orange Prize in England. Locke has written several television and movie scripts for Silver Pictures, DreamWorks, HBO, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros., Disney, and Paramount. She was a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab. She graduated from Northwestern University. Locke is originally from Houston, Texas. She now resides in Los Angeles, California with her husband and daughter. The Cutting Season is Locke’s second novel.

Set in 2009, The Cutting Season is the tale of a Louisiana antebellum plantation, Belle Vie, and the two multi-generational families that have lived there for over a century. The Clancy family, current owners of the estate, have turned the historical plantation into a strange tourist attraction. Belle Vie is a combination party and conference venue, and a museum. The slave quarters have been carefully restored. There are fully costumed reenactments led by actors caught up in phony slavery. Just outside the gates, a greedy corporation is snatching up land from poor families who have grown sugar cane here for many generations. The corporation has been replacing local workers with illegal migrant laborers. Ironically, Belle Vie’s actors fail to see what the migrant sugarcane workers are suffering just beyond Belle Vie’s gates.



Caren Gray, the story’s protagonist, is a black woman whose mother once worked at Belle Vie as a cook. She grew up on this plantation. Back then, Caren was forbidden from entering the plantation’s main house. Now, she runs the estate as the general manager from her office inside the main house. Caren has managed the property for the past four years and serves as the bridge between labor and management. None of her staff knows about her past ties to Belle Vie.

One morning, just past dawn, Caren walks the land of Belle Vie. She sees nothing out of place except an area by the fences that border the sugar cane fields that looks like it has been dug up by an animal during the night. She asks the gardener to clean it up. However, he later calls her to tell her that a woman’s body has been found in that shallow grave. The woman found is a Latina migrant worker. Caren is deeply upset about the young woman, especially after learning that she was a young mother. Caren realizes that her own daughter, Morgan, might have seen the killer.

Now, an investigation is in progress at Belle Vie and the police are on-site asking questions. Though the list of suspects is long, the police home in on a single suspect named Donovan Isaacs, a young student who works part time as one of the reenactment actors. The estates lawyer pushes Donovan to plea-bargain for a reduced sentence but Caren has the disturbing feeling that the police are chasing the wrong lead and that Donovan is innocent. She uncovers hidden facts about an old mystery, about a long-ago slave that went missing that is connected to this modern-day crime. Caren seeks the truth about Belle Vie’s murky history. Her loyalties are conflicted as she risks her life, her child’s life, and their future unearthing secrets about both cases, past and present, that lead to a desperate killer who will kill again to remain hidden.



The Cutting Season is a haunting tale, ripe with an eerie historical significance. Taking place in the south, it connects the past with modern-day America. Belle Vie is a gorgeous backdrop for the story but the place belies untold sufferings and an ugliness that cannot be denied. Caren comes across as a passive and possibly unlikely heroine even as she is actively pursuing answers. Morgan’s father, Eric, versed in local law, assists Caren on her mission. The Clancy family and the agribusiness that uses the surrounding land are both powerful forces that shape the story and contribute to the historical significance. Caren can feel the presence of ghosts whom she believes roam the property adding levity to the plot. She feels strongly that these ghosts are some of the plantation’s original slaves including her great-great-great grandfather, Jason.

This historical piece of fiction is as much as a sign of the times as it is a thriller. It’s also a commentary on race, politics, law, family, and love. It is a mystery of time, place, and human complexities.