Each chapter carries the weight and complexity of a novel - and the truths of human nature. There, too, is Douglas Pavlicek whose fall from the C-130 into the trees of Laos ends not in death but a kind of redemption he later plants seedlings of Douglas fir to replace those being cleared.Īnd there are the quirky Adam Appich and the party girl Olivia Vandergriff, whose life is a kind of second life, and Neelay Mehta who creates alternate universes in the video games he designs, and Ray and Dorothy whose relationship gives Powers plenty of room to examine the competing quandaries of love. There is Mimi Ma whose precious heirloom persists in connecting her to her family’s Chinese roots. There is the Hoel family whose 19th-century settling into Iowa’s heartland soil tells of the great American migration saga - and that of the chestnut tree. While that provides the book’s structure, much of its texture, richness and authenticity comes from the skillfully drawn characters.
In the book’s homestretch, Powers examines the impact that their acts of bravery - or foolhardiness - have had on their lives going forward. Until then, the author masterfully creates the life stories of eight or nine characters - a random medley of people drawn into those hostilities for various reasons.
In fact, the standoff in the woods does not enter into the book’s sprawling narrative until well into the storytelling. While this episode in American history serves as the fulcrum for Richards Powers’ The Overstory, the 502-page novel ranges far beyond these events. Those of us paying little attention back then to those north woods provocations might at least recall headlines focused on the movement’s symbolic icon - the spotted owl. Some demonstrations turned violent as the Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest became a proving ground for conflict among environmentalists, industry and the people whose livelihoods depended upon the lumber business. Some climbed the ancient giants and camped for months in their upper limbs to protect them from destruction.
They stood between machine and primal nature. In the 1980s and ’90s, as the whir and scream of chainsaws echoed throughout the old-growth forests of the American Northwest, protesters converged to stop the clear-cutting of the last stands of some of Earth’s tallest and oldest trees.
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