Customer Reviews

Like Trees, Walking: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved the writing in this book--strong, clear, patient. The story is both sad and important without being too depressing or grim. There is much to admire about Like Trees, Walking, but one of my favorite things was the fascinating and original perspective Ravi Howard gave us on the funeral industry. The narrator is a mortician and funeral home director and I've never read about that aspect of life in the way that I did in this novel. Like Trees, Walking is a strong debut and a well-told story. I read it for my book club and we had lots to discuss. Recommended!

Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard is a solemn tale that opens with Roy Deacon on the cusp of his fortieth birthday reflecting back twenty-two years earlier where as a senior in high school, the lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama shocked the nation and affected Roy's life and community forever. From the onset of the novel, we learn that seventeen-year-old Roy is feeling pressured to continue the family mortuary practice and envies older brother, Paul, for having the courage to defy his father's desires to see both sons embrace the business as the seventh generation to do so. His laments seem paltry when Paul finds his friend's broken body hanging from a tree on a seemingly ordinary Spring morning.

The African American community is dazed; the elders from earlier eras suffer from painful memories and haunting images resurrected from a past they never wanted to revisit. The young react in disbelief that a heinous hate crime once commonplace from yesteryear could happen to one of their peers in such modern times. The titans of the black community experience déjà vu when the police offer an ill-fated drug deal, an interracial love triangle gone awry, and other unfounded theories instead of labeling the murder a lynching and admitting to Klan activity in their fair city. The young lose their patience, optimism and trust in the legal system and their futures when the wheels of justice grind ever so slowly toward an arrest and conviction of Michael's murderers.

As the title infers from the Biblical parable, Roy, Paul, their friends, and the community struggle to make sense from it all. Their youthful innocence is prematurely stripped away at a pivotal, crucial moment in their lives. They struggle with their emotions as they prepare for their upcoming high school rites of passage (prom, commencement, senior plays, etc.) amid Michael's murder, funeral (which his family handles), and community outcries for action. Thrown into adulthood, they each compromise and forsake their childhood dreams to face family obligations, reconcile their heartfelt loss, and plot their futures.

The author solidly places the reader in 1981 Mobile complete with a sprinkling of local history and traditions, coastal community life, music, and the social and political climate of the day. Sticking to a chronological timeline, he leans heavily on the title's allegory to move the characters toward an understanding and inner peace. Enhanced by the use of metaphor and iconic figures to deliver timely words of wisdom, he creates some wonderfully detailed scenes with distinct imagery. This is a worthy debut to be enjoyed by fans of historical and/or literary fiction.

Reviewed by Phyllis

APOOO BookClub

Nubian Circle Book Club

Seventeen year old Roy Deacon is looking forward to his upcoming high school graduation and attending college in the fall of 1981. The son of a funeral director, who is currently running the business that has been in his family for seven generations, he is anxiously awaiting leaving this grim profession behind. His brother, Paul, has already taken steps to break away from the family business, which leaves a lot of the burden to assist their father on Roy.

All of this changes the day Paul discovers the body of his good friend hanging from a camphor tree - a tree meant for healing. Paul is distraught and Roy is there to support his brother through this crisis while also being responsible for preparing the body for burial. Paul becomes obsessed with trying to get justice for his friend whose heinous murder is being dismissed as a bad drug deal. But the African-American citizens of Mobile, Alabama knows there is more to it than that.

Loosely based on a true event, LIKE TREES WALKING is Howard's debut novel that originally started as a short story. This poignant tale embraces the bonds of friendship, family and a community. The author thoroughly researched for this tale which is shown with clarity and conciseness throughout the book. Howard writes with a lyrical prose that portrays the graveness and darkness of the situation without a depressing tone. He uses amazing imagery to paint a picture. This winner of Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright award is one to watch.

Reviewed by Paula Henderson

of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Ravi Howard is an amazing writer. He writes so vividly I initially thought I was reading a first person account of events, much like The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. It isn't as if he's adding extra words to sound erudite; rather, every individual word is there because it needs to be. The result is a moving image that draws you into the world of Roy Deacon, fully immersing.

In the second half of the book, we began to leave the story of Michael Donald, and I thought Howard was tangenting. I was wrong, and you'll have to read the book to see how everything comes together in very novel ways.

Michael Donald's story is awful, horrible, gut-wrenching. But too often, simply because of the nature of the media and the nature of Donald's death, the story has been only about his death. This novel brings him to life, and I challenge you to keep a dry eye throughout this book. This is a story everyone needs to remember, or hear for the first time. We can't forget Michael Donald's death. But this is a story that should be specifically read in the historical fiction of Ravi Howard, who reveals Donald's life through his death.

I picked this up on a whim and really loved it. Well written, held my attention throughout. Characters were interesting and convincing. Do yourself a favor a give it a read. Looking forward to his next offering.

A fantastically written book that pulled out all my emotions. Yet, it did not leave me with a sense of "bitterness" or "anger". Excellent reading!!!!

Mr. Howard was able to capture the "true" sense and fragrance of Mobile. I was able to walked down the streets I once walked in my adolescence. Being there during the "Lynching of Michael Donald", it brought the past to the present. Ironically, it assisted me in putting a few things in the right prespective.

The stunning beauty of the writing in this book causes it to utterly transcend its tragic subject matter and somber point of view. This is not at all the kind of book I would normally have read, but luckily I got to meet Ravi Howard at a writers conference and hear him read a little bit of it. It was an amazing experience. I went home, bought the book, and was awed. The book permits the reader to experience a world most of us will never have the privilege to enter. Reading this book made me (finally) understand why people would bother to read literature. Previously I was an all-pulp person. This guy has got some serious writing mojo.

Ravi Howard in this first novel establishes himself as a true southern writer. Like Trees Walking establishes a sense of place and time in Mobile around a violent lynching. The Deacon family has the inner struggles of siblings and family values cast against the stark reality of the death of a friend. The family holds together throughout the novel as ancestral responsibility is slowly shouldered by Roy Deacon as his brother Paul wrestles with the loss of a friend.

This novel is a worthy purchase and read.

A book about a racially motivated murder/lynching? Aren't nooses a thing of the past? If you ask the people in Jena Louisiana, they may have a different answer. "Like Trees, Walking," is a beautifully written book about a painful subject. Ravi Howard tells the story so deftly, it isn't like reading: it's like living with the people of the community. This book doesn't punish the reader, never preaches, never tells us what to think or feel, it just puts us in the middle of it. The personal life of the narrator, a high-school kid who wants to get out of Mobile, and away from his family's funeral home buisness, is woven throughout the book, and offers the hope of redemption.

Who better to tell the tale of a young man lynched in 1981 in Mobile, Alabama, than Roy Deacon, youngest son and inheriting employee of THE black funeral home owner in the area, and a teenager whose brother was a classmate of the lynching victim. Rather than proselytizing, Ravi Howard chose to serve up this sad historical event -- one that should never have occurred a decade after the Civil Rights movement had ended -- by telling it through the eyes of an insider, a teenager who must work the funeral of his brother's friend during his own senior year of high school, a fabled and joyous time for most middle-class boys.

But Howard does more here than just give us a fictionalized history lesson. He tells the sad story of two brothers whose divergent life paths are indellibly altered by the lynching that the elder brother discovers when he is coming home from working the night shift. The family story creates a personal dynamic that wraps itself around the history and leaves the reader with an understanding that nothing occurs in a vacuum.