The
Overstory, by Richard Powers.
Written
as a novel, it still abounds with incontrovertible facts, especially as to what
will happen to our earth when the human race has finally denuded our wonderful,
nurturing planet of all the forests and their ecosystems: we will be
breathless, airless – and non-existent, but still homo sapiens rushes to its destruction, for clearing trees means clearing
land, means cities built, means crops farmed for increasing populations, means
money, money, money, now our only God.
Mr
Powers introduces us to nine disparate characters who connect, sometimes
intimately, to tell his wonderful story:
Nicholas Hoel, artist and sculptor;
Mimi Ma, Chinese-American engineer;
Vietnam veteran Douglas Pavlicek;
Dr. Patricia Westford, Botanist and Dendrologist; Neelay Mehta, wheelchair-bound Silicone
valley Gamer King; Olivia Vandergriff,
college student on the verge of attaining her degree in Actuarial Science; Adam Appich, student psychologist; and Ray and Dorothy Brinkman, a prosperous
but unhappy childless couple.
Not
all these people will meet, though five of them link up in protest at the
denuding of American redwood forests in the ‘90’s and join groups which are
successful – initially – at stopping Redwood destruction in Northern
California. They are so delighted with
small victories that they name themselves after their favourite trees: Mulberry, Doug.Fir, Maple, MaidenHair, Watchman - and Maidenhair/Olivia and Nicholas/Watchman actually stop the felling of an
enormous thousand year old wonder with its own name (Mimas) for nearly a year
by camping on a platform in its upper branches – until the money men send in a
helicopter to knock them out of the air while the cutting machines assemble at
Mimas’s base. The tree is doomed, and so
is the protest.
And
further desperate, illegal protests end in tragedy and eventual betrayal, with
one of their number tricked into confessing to a crime for which they all were guilty: he receives not one, but TWO life sentences
for domestic terrorism. From eco-Warrior
to domestic terrorist – so much for youthful idealism. And did their efforts, puny as they seemed,
make any difference to the fate of the most giving things on earth? To trees, ‘our link between earth and
sky'? We must hope and pray so - to a deity
other than the Money God.
Every person who cares about our planet should read
this book. SEVEN SERIOUS STARS!
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