The Trees

by Percival Everett

Literary Fiction

Dark Satire

Mystery

309 Pages

"A high-wire combination of whodunnit, horror, and razor-sharp insight—The Trees is impossible to put down and impossible to forget."

Synopsis

When a series of brutal murders strikes the small town of Money, Mississippi—site of Emmett Till's lynching sixty-five years earlier—two Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive to investigate. They encounter the expected resistance from the racist local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of hostile white townsfolk. But the murders present a disturbing puzzle: at each crime scene, there's a second body, that of a Black man who eerily resembles Emmett Till. When this mysterious corpse disappears from the morgue only to reappear at the next murder scene, the detectives suspect these are killings of retribution. As they dig deeper, they discover that eerily similar murders are occurring across the entire country. Something supernatural seems to be unfolding. The detectives seek answers from Mama Z, a local root doctor who has spent decades meticulously documenting every lynching in America, uncovering a history of racial violence that refuses to remain buried.

Our Take

Percival Everett crafts a fearless and genre-defying masterpiece that tackles America's legacy of racial violence through dark satire and supernatural horror. Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Trees performs a delicate balancing act—blending mordant humor with profound tragedy, detective fiction with social commentary, and visceral horror with historical reckoning. Everett's sparse, direct prose and short, punchy chapters create relentless momentum while his satirical portrayal of racist townsfolk cuts deep without losing sight of the real pain at the novel's heart. This is not a comfortable read, nor should it be; Everett forces readers to confront the enduring trauma of lynching and systemic racism through a narrative that refuses easy answers or neat resolutions. The inclusion of actual historical lynching records serves as a gut-wrenching reminder that this horror is not fiction. Perfect for readers who loved The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, James by Percival Everett, and The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Essential reading for anyone seeking challenging, important literature.