Like Trees, Walking: An Acclaimed Debut About the True Story of Racial Injustice in Mobile, Alabama

Like Trees, Walking: An Acclaimed Debut About the True Story of Racial Injustice in Mobile, Alabama

Based on the true story of a modern-day lynching in America, Ravi Howard's widely acclaimed debut novel exposes one of the most tragic chapters in the history of the American South. On the morning of March 21, 1981, in Mobile, Alabama, nineteen-year-old Michael Donald was found dead, his body badly beaten and hanging from a tree on Herndon Avenue. Brothers Paul and Roy Deacon of the Deacon Memorial Funeral Home are called upon to bury their close friend and classmate, and the experience will leave them forever changed. Along with other residents of their hometown, the Deacon brothers must struggle to understand the circumstances surrounding Donald's murder—the city's first lynching in more than sixty years and a gruesome reminder of racial inequalities in the New South. “Like Trees Walking is a deeply humane, pitch-perfect story that exemplifies what fiction does best: it makes us care about one of the too easily abstracted tragedies of our culture.” - Debra Dean, author of The Madonnas of Leningrad “The verdict: A breathtaking debut.” - Atlanta Journal-Constitution “[An] imaginative rendering of one of the most brutal forms of torture in American history...Howard reveals, in lilting and haunting prose, the intricacies of caring for the dead...Like Trees, Walking delves into this and other questions, taking us to a historical moment when African Americans could encounter death for daring to be themselves” - Charlotte Observer “This is a gripping tale of evil and injustice, and a fine debut from a talented writer.” - Shelf Awareness Based on the true story of a modern-day lynching in America, Ravi Howard's widely acclaimed debut novel exposes one of the most tragic chapters in the history of the American South. On the morning of March 21, 1981, in Mobile, Alabama, nineteen-year-old Michael Donald was found dead, his body badly beaten and hanging from a tree on Herndon Avenue. Brothers Paul and Roy Deacon of the Deacon Memorial Funeral Home are called upon to bury their close friend and classmate, and the experience will leave them forever changed. Along with other residents of their hometown, the Deacon brothers must struggle to understand the circumstances surrounding Donald's murder—the city's first lynching in more than sixty years and a gruesome reminder of racial inequalities in the New South. Ravi Howard won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for his novel Like Trees, Walking . He was also a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hurston/Wright Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts. As a sports producer with NFL Films, he won an Emmy for his work on Inside the NFL .