The Overstory

Richard Powers' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel weaves together the lives of nine disparate Americans, each bound to the natural world through unique and often traumatic encounters with trees. From an Air Force loadmaster saved by a banyan in Vietnam to a scientist discovering fungal networks in the Pacific Northwest, the narrative unfolds in concentric rings, moving from antebellum New York to the modern timber wars. The prose is lyrical and dense, shifting between human drama and the slow, vast timescales of arboreal life, ultimately converging on a collective stand to protect the continent's remaining virgin forests.

Description adapted from Open Library ↗.