Review of "The Trees: A Novel" by Percival Everett

What would happen if the 'spirits' of people who'd been horribly mistreated in the past - beaten, tortured, lynched, shot, etc. - came back to get revenge. That's the theme of this satire, which is both hilarious and disturbing.

The current trouble starts in Money, Mississippi, which has a notorious past. In 1955, a 14-year-old Black youth called Emmett Till was murdered in Money after he allegedly 'offended' a white woman called Carolyn Bryant. For this misdeed, Carolyn's husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam viciously beat, mutilated, and shot Emmett, then threw him in the Tallahatchie River. Bryant and Milam were found 'not guilty' by an all white jury.




Emmett Till


Bryant's Grocery Store where Emmett Till allegedly spoke to Caroline Bryant

Money, Mississippi hasn't changed much since those Jim Crow days, and in the 21st century it's still full of poorly educated, racist bumpkins who casually (and constantly) use the n-word to refer to Black people.

The bigoted hayseeds - and everyone else in Money - are shocked when Junior Junior Milam (the son of J.W. Milam), who raises hogs, is found murdered in his back room.



Junior Junior has a bloody bashed-in skull; a length of rusty barbed wire is wrapped around his neck several times; and one of his eyes is gouged out. Ten feet from Junior Junior is the VERY dead body of a viciously beaten Black man in a blue suit.



When law enforcement officers arrive to survey the scene, Deputy Sheriff Braden Brady eyes Junior Junior and observes, "Lord, Lordy, Lord, Lord, Jesus. Looky at that. His balls ain't on him! I think they're in the n---'s hand."



Deputy Delroy Digby agrees and says, "Don't touch nothing. Don't touch a gawddamn thing. We got ourselves some kind of crime here. Lordy."



Sheriff Red Jetty arrives at the scene and sends the bodies to the coroner, a quack called Doctor Reverend Cad Fondle.



Soon afterwards, Fondle calls the sheriff and says, "We got us a problem. Somebody done stole that n----'s body."



The Black man's body reappears, however, when Wheat Bryant (the son of Roy Bryant), who has no job and does nothing, is found in his bathroom.



Wheat is dead and bloody, with barbed wire around his neck just like Junior Junior. Nearby is the 'missing' Black corpse, holding Wheat's testicles in his fist.



Wouldn't you know it, the dead Black man vanishes from the morgue once again, only to reappear at the death scene of old infirm Carolyn Bryant (the woman who accused Emmett Till), who's (seemingly) been frightened to death.

Law enforcement officials in Money are clearly out of their depth, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI) sends two agents to investigate the crimes - Special Detectives Jim Davis and Ed Morgan, both of whom are Black.





Hearing the MBI is on its way, Sheriff Jetty grouses, "Well, that's just f--- dandy. City cops coming up here to the sticks to help the hillbillies. Don't worry. I'll be nice to the sumbitches."

As it turns out, the corpse of the 'roaming Black man' can't be identified, but he seems to have an uncanny resemblance to Emmett Till.

Before long, these 'revenge' crimes spread around the country. Racists and Ku Klux Klansmen are found dead in Illinois, Minnesota, Wyoming, and California, and in each case there's an unidentified minority corpse nearby, clutching the victim's severed testicles.

MBI Special Detectives Jim Davis and Ed Morgan are joined by FBI Special Agent Herberta Hind, who also happens to be Black.



Jim, Ed, and Herberta determine that Money, Mississippi is the nexus of the crime wave, and they suspect that 105-year-old Mama Z, an African-American root doctor, is involved somehow.



Mama Z has a record of every person lynched in the United States since 1913, when her father - a voting rights activist - was strung up. Mama Z's files stretch to the thousands, and include men, women, children, and Asians. Speaking to a professor who's studying her files, Mama Z observes, "Less than one percent of lynchers were ever convicted of a crime. Only a fraction of those ever served a sentence."

Mama Z's furious great-granddaughter Gertrude observes, "Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life."



As the story reaches it's climax, and the crime wave continues to escalate, it appears the outrage has taken on a life of its own.



All this sounds grim, but the book is hilariously funny.

Many of the laughs come from the novel's farcical characters. For example, Wheat Bryant's wife Charlene is called Hot Mama Yeller (her CB handle), even by her children. When little Wheat Jr. needs to use the toilet, he whines, "Hot Mamma Yeller, I gots to pee real bad."



And at one of the murder scenes, Doctor Reverend Cad Fondle falls to his knees and prays, "Oh, Gawd Jesus, I knows you have a plan, but us poor White mortals is scared to death down here with this strange n---- you keep sending. Is he an omen, oh Lawd, a sign, or is he the devil, and should we dismember him and burn his body right away?"

Deputies Digby and Brady also generate some laughs. Faced with a flat tire on their patrol car, the deputies stand looking at the tire, scratching each other's heads. At first they scratched their own heads, but that told them nothing. But as soon as Brady scratched Digby's head, Digby said, 'Maybe we had oughta change that tire'."



More laughs come from observing White bigots around Black detectives. The rednecks can't help starting to say n-----. Then they look up and change their tunes pronto.



Author Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California whose books are often satirical, meant to explore race and identity issues in America. Everett certainly highlights such issues in this compelling and timely book.

I was appalled by the history that underlies the book, but very entertained by the narrative. My one quibble would be the incompletely resolved ending, because I wanted to know more. Still, I'd highly recommend the novel.

 Rating: 4.5 stars

Review of "Thunder Bay: A Cork O'Connor Mystery" by William Kent Krueger

 

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In this 7th book in the Cork O'Connor series, the former sheriff travels to Canada to fulfill a promise to his friend Henry Meloux, whose story forms the core of this novel. The book can be read as a standalone, but familiarity with the characters is a bonus.



*****

Corcoran (Cork) O'Connor, whose ancestry is Irish and Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) Indian, was the sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota for nearly a decade. Cork now runs a hamburger shack, and recently got his private investigator license, to keep busy and generate extra income for his college-bound children.



Cork lost his parents young, but nonagenarian Henry Meloux, an Ojibwe Medicine Man (healer and spiritualist), has been a friend/father figure to Cork for decades. So when Henry is hospitalized, and possibly dying, Cork can't deny the old man's request.



Henry tells Cork he has 'a sadness, too heavy for his heart', and reveals he fathered a son 73 years ago - a child he's only seen in visions. Henry wants to meet his offspring , and asks Cork to find the man and bring him to Minnesota. Henry gives Cork all the information he has: the boy's mother was named Maria Luna; she came from Canada; and her photo is in a pocketwatch in Henry's cabin.



Cork does some internet research and learns that Maria Luna is deceased, but her septuagenarian son, Henry Wellington, lives in Thunder Bay, Canada. Henry Wellington is the scion of a VERY WEALTHY gold-mining family, but he's an eccentric recluse (along the lines of Howard Hughes) who's hidden himself away from society.



Cork travels to Thunder Bay and manages to meet Henry Wellington, who refuses to believe his father is an 'Indian buck', and has no interest in meeting Meloux. Cork's visit seems to alarm someone, however, because an assassin subsequently tries to shoot Meloux - who's out of the hospital and back in his cabin.



Meloux now feels compelled to go to Canada to 'heal' his reclusive son, and he wants Cork to take him to Thunder Bay. Before they go, Meloux tells Cork the story of his early years, which takes up a large portion of the novel.

In a nutshell, adolescent Henry Meloux was ripped away from his family in Aurora and sent to a boarding school that functioned to inculcate 'white culture' into Indian children.



Henry ran away from the school and returned to Aurora, where he lived with his Uncle Woodrow, who taught Henry to hunt, fish, track, and live off the land.



At that time, white adventurers would hire Indian guides to take them into the wilderness. At one point young Henry was hired by two gold hunters named Luna and Wellington, who wanted to explore southern Canada. Luna brought his beautiful daughter Maria and nature took its course. Henry and Maria's romance - added to the hunters' ambition and greed - engendered tragedy, and Henry never saw Maria again. Still, Henry's visions informed him about his son. (Henry's entire tale is compelling, so you should read the book.)







Even though Henry Meloux is now in his late nineties, he's determined to go to Thunder Bay to help his son. So Meloux, Cork, and Cork's friend Wally Schanno (a former sheriff) head for Canada to make the meeting happen. This results in danger, action, and adventure......all hallmarks of Cork O'Connor books.



In a side plot, Cork is involved in a personal family drama. Cork and his wife Jo are concerned about their daughter Jenny, a recent high school graduate who's been dating a boy named Sean for years. Jenny and Sean, both aspiring writers, must make some decisions about their future, and Cork and Jo fear Jenny will make a wrong choice.



For me, this is an especially good Cork O'Connor book. Highly recommended to fans of the series and readers who like action/suspense stories.

Rating: 4 stars