"What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down."

The Overstory

It makes me wonder why we don't priorities trees. They are not only extremely important to our survival on this planet as well as many other creatures but they are also embedded in our societies all over the world. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, The Tree of Life, Yggdrasil, The Baobab Tree, The Jubokko, The Kodama, The Fusang Tree, The Ceiba Tree, and MANY MORE. They are incorporated into our culture and religions. So why do we insist on cutting them down and destroying entire ecosystems that support us?

The Overstory by Richard Powers captured my attention with the promise of trees and how humans interact with them and the horrors of deforestation. There are 5 trees and 9 people that this book features. They are supposed to intersect. Nicholas Hoel is an artist. His family members are farmers and his great-great-great-grandfather planted a Chestnut Tree. There was a plague among those trees and this one survived. Douglas Pavlicek is in the Air Force and when he falls from the plane, he lands in a Banyan Tree. He becomes obsessed, discovers the numbers and effects of deforestation so he plants as many trees as possible. And Patricia Westerford loves trees and discovers that trees have a way of communicating with each other and is shunned by her fellow scientists after her discovery. There are six other characters but none of them really impacted me the way these three did.

So I am conflicted about this book. I see it's genius and I love the passion about the trees, but I felt so disconnected. I am not sure if it is the audiobook because I did feel that the narrator did a splendid job. Maybe it was the way the book is laid out? I enjoyed more about the trees than I did the characters. I hated how it jumped around. It felt unorganized and too-long winded. There were some moments that I felt really didn't add the story and made it drag. But I do wonder if I had read the physical copy that maybe it would have clicked differently. But now I do want to go and read a ton of world mythology. So while I appreciated many aspects of this book, it also left me wanting more. So I am giving it 3 out of 5 stars.

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