The Overstory: An Epic Tale of Our Relationship with Trees

The Pulitzer-Prize Winning novel by Richard Powers

My dad planted a small blue spruce fir tree in our yard when we moved into the house in 1963. After a few years, my older sister, Melanie, could take a running leap and clear that tree which was about three feet tall. All these years later, the massive tree stands more than fifty feet high and has a trunk almost two feet in circumference.

Daddy also planted a pair of holly trees at the same time, one male and one female. (Yes, trees have sexes, depending on which one can produce berries.) The female tree in the corner of our backyard grew so humongous that Daddy felt compelled to cut it into three topiary balls, making it look like a prickly, red, and green snowman. A giant white birch tree reaches into the sky of our front yard, and a big black locust provided shade for the back deck of my childhood home.

One of my favorite poems is Walt Whitman’s “I Saw In Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing, “ where the tree “utters joyous leaves of dark green.” The apple-throwing trees in Wizard of Oz terrified and angered me as a child. The Ents, the ancient trees in The Lord of the Rings, fascinated me.

I felt it. I understand it. I have the connection to trees that Richard Powers’ Pulitzer-Prize winning…