Trees

 Trees

By Percival Everett

Another Anthony Jeselnick book club recommendation. I didn't know it, but I'd read the author before: he

penned James.

This book also deals with racial justice. It takes place in Mississippi, where the descendants of those who killed Emmett Till wind up dead. Just like Till, they are wrapped in barbed wire and mutilated beyond recognition. Strangely, there is a black man at each murder scene. And each time, the man is holding the severed testicles of the "victim." In quotes here because all of them are not just the descendants of racists, but racists themselves. 

Which is strange enough. But even stranger is that the black man -- a witness? a participant -- keeps disappearing from the morgue in which he is placed. Since the local yokels can't solve the crime, two black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive. Followed by a a certified member of the FBI. 

Behind the murders is a local group. Soon, though, they spread. And soon, there are murders happening all across the country. The murders aren't ever really solved, but it appears as though they are the result of a mob of lynching victims who have somehow risen from the dead to exact retribution, even at the highest levels of power.

If it sounds absurd -- it is. Somehow, Everett manages to make a book about the legacy of lynching humorous. It worked well enough that I've picked up another of his novels.