The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Everett, Percival. The Trees. Graywolf Press, 2021.

In the town of Money, Mississippi, a white man named Junior Junior Milam is found murdered in his home. On the scene is a dead Black man, holding Milam’s severed testicles. Both men are pronounced dead by the coroner, the Reverend Cad Fondle, and their bodies are taken to the morgue. The Black man’s body soon goes missing.

Two Black detectives from the MBI (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation), Ed Morgan and Jim Davis, are sent to Money to investigate. In the meantime, a white man named Wheat Bryant, whose mother Carolyn — also known as Granny C — is Junior Junior’s aunt, is found murdered in his home. The same dead Black man is holding Wheat’s removed testicles. While the sheriff, Red Jetty, is investigating this second crime, Jim and Ed eat at a local restaurant called the Dinah and meet a waitress named Gertrude. At the second murder scene, Granny C, who has expressed regret for having told a lie years ago about a Black boy, stops speaking upon seeing the dead Black man. On the way to the morgue, the Black man’s body disappears again.

Ed and Jim interview Charlene Bryant, Wheat’s wife. When Granny C sees the detectives, she screams, then appears to apologize. At the Dinah, Ed asks Gertrude if she is Black and she says that she is. A news report comes on the television in the restaurant about a man named Lester William Milan having been beaten to death in his Chicago home. Jim and Ed soon discover that both of the white men who have been murdered were descendants of the men who murdered Emmett Till — J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant — and that Granny C was Till’s accuser. The narration reveals that Fondle is the Grand Kleagle of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Gertrude takes Ed and Jim to see a 105-year-old woman named Mama Z whom she says is her great-grandmother. Mama Z has been keeping records of lynchings since 1913. She tells the detectives that the news report likely misstated the name of the man killed in Chicago, and that he was probably J.W. Milam’s brother.

Granny C is discovered dead with the reappeared Black man’s body, but does not appear to have been assaulted. Gertrude calls a friend of hers, a professor in Chicago named Damon Nathan Thruff, who has written books on racial violence. She urges him to come to Money. At the MBI headquarters, Ed and Jim meet Herberta Hind, an FBI agent assigned to the case. They learn that the Black man’s body matches the DNA of a man who died in prison in Illinois.

The Reverend Fondle is killed in his bedroom. Jetty reports to the detectives that Fondle’s testicles were removed and a different dead Black man was on the scene. Other, similar murders of white men begin to occur across the country with variations — sometimes the dead men holding the other men’s testicles are white or Asian instead of Black. In the meantime, Damon has arrived with Gertrude at Mama Z’s and begins to go through the lynching records. He eventually begins making a list of the names of all the victims in pencil, intending to erase and release them.

Hind learns from Helvetica Quip, a medical examiner, that the DNA of the second dead Black man belonged to another one-time prisoner whose body was taken to Acme Cadaver Supply in Chicago, where the other body was taken as well. Ed interviews Fondle’s wife. She tells him Fondle hated Red Jetty because Jetty’s father left the Klan after Fondle’s father, who was Grand Kleagle at the time, killed a Black man. Ed also interviews Dill, an employee of Fondle’s who admits that his boss covered up a police murder by declaring it suicide. Jim goes to Chicago to consult with a detective about Lester Milam’s murder and visits the Acme Cadaver company, where he learns that a truck of bodies went missing two months earlier. The driver was named Chester Hobsinger.

Jim reports to Ed and Hind that he has searched Hobsinger’s home and found Money, Mississippi circled on a map with words that might be “blue gun” (208). On their way to investigate a new killing in Hernando, Mississippi, where six white men were found murdered with the body of a Black man, Jim, Ed, Hind, and Helvetica stop at a restaurant called the Bluegum. They see Gertrude there, but when Jim phones her, she lies and says that she is at Mama Z’s.

At a meeting at Mama Z’s house, where Gertrude and Damon are present, an undercover group discusses the recent killings. They are concerned because they were only responsible for the murders involving the Bryant and Milam families and do not know who has been committing the others. Damon, who did not know that Gertrude and Mama Z were involved in any of the killings, is shocked.

Delroy Digby and Braden Brady, two Money deputies, are killed by a mob of Black men. Around the country, more white men are being attacked by similar mobs of Black men — and, in one case, Chinese men. Ed, Jim, and Hind arrest Chester Hobsinger at the Bluegum. The Secretary of the Treasury is murdered in the White House, and the President is shaken by the incident.

Through questioning Hobsinger, Hind and Ed learn the location of his group. Jim finds Gertrude at the location, where she confesses the group’s involvement but explains that they were only responsible for the first three murders. While she is showing him a walk-in freezer holding dead bodies, the freezer door shuts and is locked from the outside. In the meantime, chaos and fear continue across the country, and the President makes a racist speech. Ed and Hind rescue Jim and Gertrude from the freezer. The four go to Mama Z’s house, where Damon is typing names on a typewriter as the sounds of mobs can be heard outside.