Description: A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2015 by HarperCollins publishers.
Brief description:
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.
Review Quotes:
"[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
"Howard elegantly tells this story. More importantly, he reminds us that the past is not so very past after all." - The Jackson Clairon Ledger
"Howard has a fine eye for detail and knows how to turn a good phrase....Beautiful passages...are often interspersed with sometimes clinical and graphic descriptions....Howard is a talent to watch, and this work introduces us to a fictional universe that we'll definitely want to encounter again." - Washington Post Book World
"Howard's triumph is the nuanced depiction of the unyielding tension running throughout Mobile's black community following the lynching. With such an explosive subject, Howard could have launched an emotional broadside on each page. Instead, he recreates the period's awful dread by blending muted dialogue with his character's nervous mannerisms, making the suppressed emotion all the more volcanic." - Current Magazine
"In his stirring debut novel, Like Trees, Walking (Amistad), Ravi Howard mines the explosive aftermath of one of America's last recorded lynchings...Graced with an acute sense of his characters' lives and times, Howard reveals how racial hatred and the impulse to seek retribution must give way to redemption before one can truly break free from past injustice." - Elle
"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
"It is a beautifully wrought, 'quiet' novel and deserves a wide readership." - Tuscaloosa News
"Ravi Howard tells a thoroughly convincing story about the singing star Nat King Cole's best friend.... [A] warmly enveloping book.... Appealing." - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Gifted novelist Howard...takes readers of all races, ages and classes into the world of pre-civil rights era black people, offering insight on and understanding of one of our country's most tumultuous periods." - BookPage
"By following Howard's characters, we are allowed a sidelong but penetrating glimpse into one of the most important events in American history.... Howard bends history...proving that the past can be best felt through refracted light rather than under the harsh glare of historical fact." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"A moving tale about bigotry and the power of friendship." - People
"Excellent...moving....Weary is a marvelous character who never becomes didactic. His voice is painstakingly real, precise, and authentic, allowing the reader to drop into the moment as though sitting next to him in the front passenger seat of Cole's Cadillac limousine.... What Howard does so well...is to develop a storytelling perspective out of the limelight, that of someone who is not a leader, but a follower with practical concerns of family, occupation, and personal safety.... Readers who appreciate beautifully written, compelling novels with great depth and humanity will be more than pleased." - Philadelphia Inquirer
"Excellent...moving....Weary is a marvelous character.... Readers who appreciate beautifully written, compelling novels with great depth and humanity will be more than pleased." - Philadelphia Inquirer
" Heartbreaking.... A bold reimagining of [the] civil rights era.... Howard's choices...are daring." - Los Angeles Times
"In an easygoing style, with Weary as his guide, Howard pokes into under-viewed corners of the fight while never losing sight of the humanity of both the cause and its effects." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"The verdict: A breathtaking debut." - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The value of Ravi Howard's debut novel, "Like Trees, Walking," is that it penetrates to the emotional core of a ghastly event in a way that nonfiction never could...Howard writes as convincingly of that not-long-enough-ago horror as if he were present...clever and effective...notable for its well-turned insights delivered with considerable punch...a powerful and promising debut novel from a talented young writer. - Mobile Register
"Howard brings readers back in time to postwar Alabama, in this velvety smooth fictional memoir. . . . This story about a strong man, living with his head held high, is set against the backdrop of Jim Crow and the Montgomery bus boycott. Howard's prose goes down like the top-shelf whiskey that Weary favors, making for a heady reading experience." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Howard brings readers back in time to postwar Alabama, in this velvety smooth fictional memoir. . . . [His] prose goes down like the top-shelf whiskey that Weary favors, making for a heady reading experience." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Alternating between the cities and Weary's past and present, Howard explores race relations in the pre-civil rights era and the strong ties forged between two extraordinary men." - Booklist
"Powerful.... A personal, poignant portrayal of how the lives of African Americans could be so easily derailed by racial inequality." - Library Journal (starred review)