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