The Cutting Season
novel by Attica Locke
The Cutting Season is a 2012 mystery thriller novel by Attica Locke.
Plot summary
Caren Gray is manager of Belle Vie, a historic antebellum plantation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana used as an event venue. After a dead woman is found on the estate grounds, the plantation is torn apart by an investigation.
Reception
The novel received positive reviews from critics. Val McDermid, in The Guardian, described it as "a novel rich in atmosphere, strong in story, but at its heart The Cutting Season hinges on human complexity. The tangled rope of some kind of history has a stranglehold on everyone at the heart of this book". Kirkus Reviews wrote that it was "written with fluidity and elegance, evoking the uniqueness of her setting and the nuances in the relationships of her characters, complicated by race, class and history." It won the 2013 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Cutting Season” as novel by Attica Locke. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as novel by Attica Locke. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q127002128. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012 and 2013.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Cutting Season”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Cutting Season primary sources, The Cutting Season archive and Cutting research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Cutting Season”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Cutting Season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.