TheChoiring of the Trees examines and questions the concept of capital punishment. It opens with a young man from Stay More — Nail Chism, who is not quite twenty-eight — being escorted to the electric chair for execution. Although his execution is aborted by the Governor's last minute stay, Nail will have the experience of twice more being escorted to the electric chair. What makes Nail Chism's death sentence so morally chilling is that he is innocent. He had been framed by a crooked Newton County politician and his cohorts. Much of the story details Nail's imprisonment from late in 1914 to mid-1915 in the Arkansas Penitentiary in Little Rock and examines, consequently, the ways society treats those whom it imprisons. The conditions Nail and his fellow prisoners experience are barbaric: Little attention is paid to hygiene, the food is barely nourishing, and some of the guards...