The Trees cover art

The Trees

A Novel

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Trees

By: Percival Everett
Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £14.05

Buy Now for £14.05

About this listen

An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone

Percival Everett's The Trees is a must-listen 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. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America's pulse.

©2021 Percival Everett (P)2022 Tantor Crime Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Mystery Fiction Murder Witty Social justice Suspense Detective Mississippi
All stars
Most relevant
Reader was a little lack lustre, and expressionless with no real intonation in his delivery. This reduced a lot of real drama.
I found it difficult to keep interest at many key points and therefore needed
To replay many times.
I did manage to GET the idea of the book (including humour, irony, ignorance and racism and a particular fool of a past president)
by the end.

Return and revenge

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As a story I regard this as jumbled and incomplete. It feels like a book that tries too much and doesn’t deliver on any front apart from highlighted historic racist atrocities.

There were a few funny lines and the playing with peoples names was clever if a little overused.

It’s not a bad book and certainly better than I could write however I cannot see what the fuss is other than messaging that will appeal to some demographics and one side of the ongoing culture apocalypse. To Kill a Mockingbird it ain’t

One real message, otherwise incoherent

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Remarkable book. I have Bill Nighy to thank for mentioning that he was hoping for this book as his Xmas gift when he stood in for Iggy Pop on BBC Radio 6 Music.

The past remains present in determining the future.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Such a pity. I wanted to get at the humour more but the reading was so weird that it kind of hot in the way of it.

The reading sounds like dictation or some kind of enabling software

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I really loved it. Clever, macabre, ironic, thought provoking and beautifully read. I highly recommend.

Black humour

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews