When hog thief Junior Junior Milam is found brutally murdered, the police of Money, Mississippi, are stumped. When his cousin is found dead in the same gruesome fashion, it’s time for the MBI-the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation-to step in.
Special detectives Ed and Jim expect resistance from the local sheriff, the coroner and a string of racist White townsfolk. What they don’t expect is an inexplicable mystery: at each crime scene a second dead body was found-that of the same Black man. A man who looks eerily familiar.
As similar murders are reported from Illinois to California, the detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried.
Provocative, fast-paced and morbidly funny, The Trees is an urgent novel of lasting importance, from an author with a finger on America’s pulse.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Imprint: Text Aust
Publication date: 05/10/2022
The Trees
By Percival Everett
Review by Sophie
Essential Reading.
Have you ever read something so in-your-face you can't look away? The Trees was like that for me, because even though it is a work of fiction, it does nothing less than speak the truth. By no means is it an easy read to digest, thematically speaking. The crimes it deals with are confronting, and devastating. But Percival Everett is not here to comfort us. He is asking his readers to open their eyes and bear witness to the darkness in humanity's history. Fast-paced, horrifying, powerful and underneath it all somehow comedic, Everett packs a punch with every page. This is a book that has stuck with me, and I'm glad it exists.
