
Today, publisher Lisa Lucas returns to help us break down the 2021 crime novel The Trees by Percival Everett. In discussing the page-turning thriller, we admire the brilliance of the humor and history on every page, and the mastery Percival Everett himself. We also ask questions around the future, past, and present of the United States in the face of palpable political tensions.There are spoilers on this episode.
Be sure to listen all the way to end of the episode to find out what our October book club pick will be!
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
- The Trees by Percival Everett
- Money, Mississippi
- Danzy Senna
- Erasure by Percival Everett
- Percival Everett by Virgil Russell by Percival Everett
- I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett
- Telephone by Percival Everett

- Emmett Till
- Carolyn Bryant
- “Woman at center of Emmett Till case tells author she fabricated testimony” (Rory Carroll, The Guardian)
- Quentin Tarantino
- The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
- “On Percival Everett’s Almost Secret Experiment in a Novel in Threes” (Literary Hub, David Lerner Schwartz)
- The Rock Springs, Wyoming lynching
- Tulsa race massacre
- Chicago race riot
- Elaine, AK massacre
- Family Matters (ABC)
- Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- “New Rule: A Unified Theory of Wokeness | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)” (Youtube.com)
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- Sula by Toni Morrison
- Black No More by George S. Schuyler
- The Sellout by Paul Beatty
- Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
- Lovecraft Country (HBO)
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- Watchmen (HBO)
- A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
- Game of Thrones (HBO)
- The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson
- “The 1619 Project and the Long Battle Over U.S. History” (New York Times)
- How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
- Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
- Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
- Banned Books Week
- “Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools” (Jonathan Friedman and Nadine Farid Johnson, PEN America)
- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- N.W.A
- Tipper Gore putting warning labels on music
- Moms for Liberty
- Graywolf Press
- The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, Alabama)
- Bryan Stevenson
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell
- “Ep. 231 At the End of Every Day There’s a Book with Lisa Lucas” (The Stacks)
- Fairest by Meredith Talusan
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