The Trees (2021) by Percival Everett was long listed for the Booker prize in 2022.
Set in the small town of Money, Mississippi, white people are murdered, ostensibly by a dead black man.
Money, Mississippi is where African American teenager, Emmett Till (1941-1955) was abducted and tortured before he was lynched.
An important one amongst the plethora of characters in The Trees is 105-year-old resident of Money, Mama Z, whose father was lynched.
Mama Z has been gathering files on the victims of this horrendous crime for decades; she now has a file “for nearly every person lynched in this country since 1913” (Everett, Trees, 169) beginning with her father who was killed shortly after her birth.
Mama Z’s mother died 3 months after the brutal murder of her father and she was raised by a paternal uncle.