By Paul Carrier
Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prizing-winning novel, The Overstory, has no shortage of intriguing characters who leave an indelible mark on the reader.
And some of them are even human.
In a series of seemingly disconnected tales that ultimately share a powerful, unifying theme, Powers uses his human protagonists to focus our attention on an entirely different life form.
Described by author Ann Patchett as “the best novel ever written about trees and really just one of the best novels, period,” The Overstory is hauntingly beautiful in its description of the majesty, complexity, importance and mind-boggling sophistication of trees.
As Powers writes of a husband and wife who find themselves newly mesmerized by these amazing creatures, each species on the couple's growing list of discoveries has a unique "history, biography, chemistry, economics, and behavioral psychology. Each new tree is its own distinct epic, changing the story of what is possble.”
Read The Overstory and you will never see a tree —any tree — the same way again.
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