Percival Everett's Latest Grounds Racial Allegory In History, Horror And Blood
Editor's note: This review uses repeated quotations from the book that contain racial slurs.
At a certain point, dark social satire bleeds into horror. That can be powerful, but it can also very easily miss its target. Percival Everett's new novel The Trees hits just the right mark. It's a racial allegory grounded in history, shrouded in mystery, and dripping with blood. An incendiary device you don't want to put down.
The narrative hinges on a series of confounding and gruesome murders in the town of Money, Mississippi, site of the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. It's a grimly familiar topic, — galvanized activists and shocked much of the nation. Fourteen-year old Emmett, a Chicago teen visiting relatives for the summer, was accused of whistling at, flirting with, grabbing and or maybe just touching the hand of a married white woman named Carolyn Bryant. Three days later, he was dead. A month later his killers were acquitted. Six decades later Bryant at least partially recanted her claim. (Or perhaps not; it's .)
