Everett’s Booker-shortlisted novel combines laugh-out-loud satire with the very real horrors that white supremacy has inflicted upon people of color, particularly Black people. It's a hard thing for a narrative about lynching and its legacy to pull off, but this book makes you laugh with one line--even as the next makes you recoil with fear and disgust. The story begins with the murder of a white man, the descendant of one of Emmett Till's killers--with beside him a corpse that eerily resembles Emmett. From there, Everett conducts a grim tour of America’s lynchings, ratcheting up the momentum as he goes.