The Tree of Forgetfulness

by Pam Durban

In The Tree of Forgetfulness, writer Pam Durban, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award, continues her exploration of southern history and memory. This mesmerizing and disquieting novel recovers the largely untold story of a brutal Jim Crow–era triple lynching in Aiken County, South Carolina. Through the interweaving of several characters’ voices, Durban produces a complex narrative in which each section reveals a different facet of the event. The Tree of Forgetfulness resurrects a troubled past and explores the individual and collective loyalties that led a community to choose silence over justice.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Race, Historical, Southern

182 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 12, 2012

About the author

from the back of the book All Set About with Fever Trees
Pam Durban grew up in South Carolina. She has worked as a journalist and teacher in New York, Kentucky, and Georgia. She was the 1984 recipient of the Rinehart Award in Fiction, and her work has appeared in a number of publications, including Tri-Quarterly, Crazyhorse, and The Georgia Review. The title story of this, her first book, appeared in The Editor's Choice anthology, Vol. II. She currently teaches at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

from amazon.com:
Pam Durban is the author of The Laughing Place, which won the 1994 Townsend Prize for Fiction. In addition, Durban is the recipient of the 1988 Whiting Writer's Award and the 1984 Rinehart Award in Fiction. Her stories, which have appeared in such publications as Tri-Quarterly, Crazyhorse, and The Georgia Review, have been widely anthologized. She teaches at Georgia State University.

Reviews

[Rachael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was painful and without satisfactory resolution, which makes it more true to life than a satisfactory ending would have.

[H Theikos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is woven narrative; there are a set core of characters whose own narratives or like pieces of a patchwork quilt that is slowly being constructed as you read. The stories, each distinct, unique, clear, authentic, are pieced together non-linearly but thematically, and soon the whole story begins to take shape. This is the kind of storytelling that is told carefully, slowly, but also purposefully unclearly. If you enjoy the slow and careful pace of a well-crafted narrative that brings forth aspects of the human condition that are real but are also painful--cowardice, pride, classism, racism, shame--then this is the kind of story that will grab you. Have a pen and paper and keep track of the characters and who they are, as the author isn't spoon-feeding anything to you: it requires active reading and critical reading to keep track of who's who and how they're connected.

Ultimately, this is a meditative work on family, class, friendship, racism, the South, and personal authenticity. The lead characters have participated in the horror of a lynch mob, and their own acceptance of their own culpability is delivered to the reader in bits, as they come to terms with it themselves. This is a lovely telling, artful and careful, about what is horrific yet all too common among the human condition. This is the sort of story that humanizes what can be dismissed as monstrous: the monsters are us, we have wives and children and regret, and all of that unfolds slowly enough that we empathize, learn and grow with the characters and their reckoning with their own (monstrous) humanity.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that tries to capture the chaos and distortion after a lynching in South Carolina. Each chapter switches between points of view--the Northern reporter/WWI medic who is appalled by the horror of the lynching, one of the men who was involved, both from his point of view during 1926 when it happened and on his death bed twenty or thirty years later, a Black woman who worked as a maid in the house of the before mentioned white man, the white sheriff, etc. It flashed back and forth between past and present and real and imagined. It does not deal directly with the victims of the lynching itself (one woman and two men), the crime they allegedly committed, or the first trial (where they were convicted) and the second trial (where they were let off), but deals with the aftermath of the lynching itself. Some of the characters are better and more completely drawn than others, but the fact that book does not settle for easy answers around who was guilty and who was not is satisfying. It's not a conclusive book, and this feels to me like fiction that gets closer to the truth of events than a nonfiction account might get. Well worth a read. (Also short--although not fast--because the switching of characters points of view keeps the reader on his or her toes keeping track of who is who.)

[Gayle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book by established author, Pam Durban, is a fine piece of work.
I like most southern writers and she is near the top of the list now that
this book lead me to her.

Fiction, based on actual events, The Tree of Forgetfulness is a story that tells of racial tensions
that lead to bad stuff and how an entire town pulled the shades down and pretended that
nothing much had happened.

We can see through the eyes of several of the characters, all of whom are well developed.
You'll like this if you have any interest in South Carolina history, post-slavery blacks
and how some things that should have, but didn't, come with their "freedom".

I give this book five stars.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the characters and the different views of reality described in the book. The writing is amazing and at the end I felt I understood both the good and bad of each one. Would definitely recommend if.

[Brenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a well written book. Very impressive with the research that went into this also. Want to read more of her books. Interesting also,for me as I recognized some of the streets & names of characters.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit confusing at first but then you realize what is going on slowly...very good and very eye opening!

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

a good read..informative while inducing remorse for our callous treatment of fellow human beings.

[Diana Eberhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three people are lynched in 1926 South Carolina, and for the next 54 years, "what happened" is told by many townspeople, in many versions.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

"They all knew how murky things could get when what *really* happened got so tangled up with what *should* have happened, it was hard to tell them apart, especially when a man mistook what he'd *meant* to do for what he'd *actually* done."

A short novel offering a multi-perspective look at a South Carolina lynching in 1926 as described by the participants and witnesses at the time and over the years to come. It's a book about white supremacist violence that mainly centers white voices written by a white Southerner, but it does demonstrate that it has something to add to the conversation by critically exploring how the bystanders of the time justified their actions to themselves, the way they subtly changed their own personal stories to avoid guilt, as well as by avoiding the white savior trap - the best candidate for the position turns out to be a deconstruction of how the actions of the crusading white man ended up causing harm to the people he claims he's helping and a few hints of the psychological temptations of white supremacy.

I believe Durban ultimately succeeded in her project of explaining how non-participants in lynching perpetuated violent oppression and why without excusing them for doing so. It's a challenging read, and I expect I'll be thinking about it for a while.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn’t a bad book but I have no interest in reading it again and wouldn’t recommend it either. Also, giving it two stars will (hopefully) keep similar books out of the suggestions on this app, which are getting very bad and not aligned with my interests at all. But that might be because this app is owned by Amazon and you get “suggestions” based on whom pays Amazon the most to promote their books.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book of the year, so far, and one of the top books I’ve ever read. As a southerner the writing and characters feel true. The lessons to be learned from this are many, from horrors of racism, cowardice and even the cruelty and abuse of beliefs such as hell.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another book I read for my Southern Women Writers course, with the added bonus that I got to hear the author speak when she came to my class to discuss the book. I always feel a little bit of guilt when I say negative things about authors I’ve actually met or talked with, but I guess I’ll go to bed with a guilty conscious tonight.

The novel takes place in 1923, the year of a brutal race related triple lynching in South Carolina and in 1946, when one of the characters apparently involved in the lynching is on his death bed. We get the story through several characters’ eyes and slowly unravel exactly what happened that night, and the effect it had on the two separate communities.

Overall this wasn’t a horrible novel. I actually enjoyed it for the most part. The writing for the most part was actually quite lyrical and flowed very well. The characters were very real to me and I was interested in the story for almost the entire book (almost is the key word here.) My issue was that it was really too long. Unfortunately the book didn’t even get to 200 pages so that seems to me to be a problem.

I actually found out from the author that this novel is based on experience with her family, based on her grandparents, which was extremely intriguing to me. I feel like that aspect of it could have been explored more, but instead Durban simply writes herself into the story as a bystander (in a really self righteous way in my opinion.)

So it’s a meh story. I wouldn’t really urge anyone to read this, but if you have time and you want a fairly interesting story go for it.

3/5 stars

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is based on an actual event. It takes place in Aiken County, South Carolina. It tells of the lynching of three people in a horrific manner more in by what is not described as what is slowly revealed. The main essence of the story is cleverly told through the voice of a dying man as he speaks to his unborn granddaughter. As the crime is revealed the reader is given the opportunity to think about guilt, blame, and responsibility as well as the keeping of secrets and the hurt they can cause. The characters are well developed. The character that disappointed me most was Zeke as he was left the south but never really resolved his feelings for the family for whom he and his mother worked even at his mother's death.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be honest, this isn't the kind of subject matter I'm normally drawn to. Southern town torn apart by brutal lynching in the early 20th century. But for some reason I picked it up. And I was hooked. Durban tells the story by switching back and forth among a handful of main characters, as well as between 1926 when the lynching occurred and 1943 when one of the characters is on his death bed. She writes beautiful spare prose that succeeds in humanizing each character without ever making excuses for them. This is especially impressive considering that the story is based on actual events involving her own family.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent story, but not a book to read if you expect clear resolution or a happy ending. It is interesting to hear the perspective of these brutal killings from several different individuals and how they justified the act. I never really got a good sense of the level of guilt the Long's actually had in the illegal whiskey trade, but that may be because I missed small details! I read the first quarter of this book in really small increments.

[Linda and David Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The central event, a horrible lynching in South Carolina in the 20's, is pieced together little by little through various characters: a reporter from NY, a maid who finds bloody shoes in the house where she works, the husband on his dying bed trying to tell his version to his granddaughter...some details are not told until the end, which left me a little unsettled. It jumps ahead to the future and seems disjointed. One of NPR's best summer reads for 2013, which is why I downloaded it.

[Chrissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a little confusing at first. I didn't understand who was who or what was going on. But once I figured it out, it was a very compelling book about racism, particularly in the 1920s South. It was hard to know who the "good guy" was, because everyone was just a little bit shady. Overall a great book.

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a book that can be read in bed at 11 o'clock after three glasses of wine. I tried. I'll have to try it again on a road trip or some other time it can have my undivided attention. Felt very heavy for such a thin book.

[Avary Doubleday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a new topic, but well done -- telling the story from several viewpoints over a period of years. I selected it for it's local interest:Aiken, SC, where my brother lives.

[Diane · Rating 1 out of 5]

didn't like enough to finish

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, varied, unsettling, but left feeling the story is not completely told

[Terri Steffes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book. Looking for a good historical fiction, Civil rights era, this is a good read for you!

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Never really came together for me...

[Donna Trump]

Great use of multiple third-person points of view to tell a story unique to each point of view. I liked the narrative of one character from his fever-ridden death-bed.

[Cori · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished this book more than a month ago, and had to read some of the other reviews to even remember what it's about. I remember thinking it isn't bad, but clearly it's not memorable.

[Janet Atkins]

Emotionally charged and thought provoking.

[Kat Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply affecting. Will be reading more from Durban's pen.