The Trees

2023 Longlist

Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI 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. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.

About the Author:

Percival Everett is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of over thirty books, including The Trees, Telephone, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, and Erasure. He has received Guggenheim and Creative Capital fellowships, and lives in Los Angeles.

Nominating Library’s Comments:

The Trees is a powerful social satire of lasting importance. – Free Library of Philadelphia, USA