Percival Everette

In 2025 I read two books by Percival Everette, Assumption and The Trees. Both of these should have made my personal best of list, but I just went with the one that stuck with me most. The Trees, for me, is up there with season one of True Detective, as a perfect piece of crime fiction. Here is the description from the publishers website:

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.

In what starts off as a typical brutal crime story, it evolves into a story that I don’t want to know the answers to. It is a rare thing for me to read or engage in something where I am okay not knowing all the answers to, but this is close to the top of the charts. Similar to how I would have been okay if season 3 of Twin Peaks never came to be, this could have ended a chapter early and I would have been just as happy.

The way that Everette is able to move seemingly effortlessly between genres and stories shows how much of a master of the craft he is. My wife and I still talk about this book probably once every 3-5 weeks and it is striking how many details stick out.

Walk don’t run to your local brick and mortar or library and get this book.

Grace and peace.