A Book A Week

In the scope of American history, racism and police brutality have gone hand in hand. They are codependent evils founded on ignorance and hate. Sadly they are evils that continue to exist in the present day.  It seems like every week, there's a shocking new video of another unarmed black man being killed by the police. Society seems to be more and more aware of these issues, but the people in power still seem unable to put a stop to them. It is natural that artists would turn to their craft to address these difficult subjects. Percival Everett's 2021 novel The Trees attempts to do just that. 

“You should know I consider police shootings to be lynchings.”

Money, Mississippi isn't the kind of town most people have heard of. The small rural community is one rooted deeply within its own past. A deeper investigation into the town's history would reveal that it played host to one of the most disturbing pieces of American history. Money, you see, is the place where the notorious lynching of the young boy Emmett Till took place. All these years later, the townsfolk continue to live their lives as if nothing has changed. They act and speak with the casual racism of their Jim Crow ancestors. 

The novel gets moving straight away when a white man named Junior Junior is discovered murdered. He's been castrated and strangled with rusty barbed wire. As if this isn't gruesome enough, another corpse lies next to him. This second body looks eerily like the murdered Till boy, brutal beating and all. Soon this crime is repeated in another town. The method of execution is identical, and the remains of the Emmett Till lookalike are present again. Over the next several days this exact scene unfolds in various locations across the country. Who is behind these killings? Is the past finally catching up with the people who deserve to see justice?

The Trees sees Percival Everett write an explosively powerful novel that subverts nearly every attempt to classify it. The plot is driven by a fast-paced murder mystery, a crime that seems too implausible to be real. Everett characterizes the racist southerners in his work as sheer clowns, mocking their stupidity and obtuseness. This gives the work a quick-witted humor that I wasn't expecting from a book about lynchings.  Here though, it works. The comedy lies hand in hand with the more poignant and disturbing elements of the book. Everett doesn't shy away from the violence that comes with hate crimes, using the horrific details of the events to highlight the bitter reality. It is in the 105-year-old character Mama Z, that I found the most emotional impact. She has taken it upon herself to write the names of every lynching victim in her lifetime, a solemn labor of dignity and respect in a world where decency seems to be in short supply. The Trees is as propulsively readable as it is challenging. It is a masterwork of modern fiction. 

For more information visit Amazon and Goodreads. 

(2023, 10)