The Overstory

At dawn, a man lays on his back in the forest. He worries that “nothing will be the same” (325), but the sound of the plants reassures him that his presence makes a difference. The man must get to work.

Olivia’s body is placed into the fire, “sending it into forever” (327). Her companions get in the van and drive away; Nick and Adam threaten each other, Mimi drives, and Douggie advocates surrender. They go their separate ways: Nick camps in the devastated redwood forest and will not sleep well for 20 years; Mimi and Douggie get rid of the van and she insists they split up to avoid detection; Olivia’s death is blamed on a deranged killer; Adam finishes his thesis and becomes a respected figure in his field. Nick is haunted by Olivia’s death and stays in a cabin near the devastated forest. Rains cause a landslide, and Nick saves his neighbors as their cabins are destroyed. Douggie cannot leave Mimi alone as he is desperate to tell her about a dream in which Olivia tells him to wait and see. Mimi tells him to stay away from her forever. She sells her house and, using the huge profits from the sale of her father’s treasures, takes on a new identity. Douggie drives west, past the site of their bombing, and finds himself in an abandoned town that nature has taken back.

Dorothy brings the bedbound Ray his breakfast. In his eyes, she can read his thoughts, which say “you’re the last bearable thing left to me, aside from death” (338). She has struggled to deal with the aftermath of her husband’s stroke for weeks but now acts out the role of loving wife. She reads the crossword aloud and tries to interpret his gargled answers. In the evening, she visits her lover. When she returns to Ray at night, he surprises her by grabbing her wrist and asking for pen and paper. She stares at the confusing scratches until she realizes that it is an answer to the crossword puzzle.

Twenty years pass, in which Patty documents the disappearing species around her, Nick hides and works, and Adam continues his research.

Neelay plays the latest version of Mastery when he should be in business meetings. He meets another player who complains that the game has become too much like work, too much like real life. The game has a Midas problem, the player tells Neelay, in that “everything’s dying a gold-plated death” (344).

Adam receives a promotion and, while enduring his busy life, watches a report on an eco-terrorist attack. The use of the old slogans makes him worry that his old friends have returned to the fight. Mimi reads about the same attack and, like Adam, worries she will be incriminated. Nick does not hear about the attacks; he works as a stock boy and, at night, paints environmentalist murals around the city.

Ray tries to tell Dorothy to leave him, but she cannot understand his attempts at speaking. He knows that she wanted to leave, but he cannot help being pleased to see her each day. He learns to love the fiction she reads to him.

As the year 2000 approaches, Douggie lives in a cabin in the abandoned town he discovered. He works for the Bureau of Land Management, a caretaker for “the Friendliest Ghost Town in the West” (351). He is writing a book about his failures as an environmental activist. Later, he walks around the snow-covered town. He slips and falls; grabbing hold of a tree saves his life. Injured and in pain, the memory of Olivia gives him the strength to climb out of danger.

Patty continues to work long past her retirement age. Her least favorite task is raising money through lectures and presentations. She much prefers travelling the world’s forests, collecting samples for her seed bank. For a short amount of time, she even has the attention of the media. She visits the rainforests of Brazil to capture seeds, including seeds they cannot identify. They need armed protection from poachers and bandits. The local rubber tappers blame the Americans for creating the black-market demand. Dennis waits for Patty to return, maintaining the seed bank itself. At night, Patty wonders who will do replant all the seeds she has collected. One day, they come across a bandit camp. After chasing away the bandits, they burn the camp to the ground. As they delve deeper into the jungle, Patty sees wonderous plants and a face made from the bark of a tree. It reminds her of the myths her father taught her. She shows Dennis a picture when she returns, and he recommends turning it into a poster to raise funds. That night, he dies in bed beside her.

Dorothy’s lover demands that she choose between him and the incapacitated Ray as he is “tired of sharing” (361). Dorothy tells him that it is share or nothing, and he chooses nothing. One day, Ray screams for her, and together, they watch planes hit the World Trade Center towers on the television.

Now a therapist and living under the name Judith Hanson, Mimi waits for her final client of the day. Most of her prospective clients suffer from “nothing worse than too much money” (362). She only sees those who are actually in pain. When her client arrives, she sits opposite Mimi, and they look one another in the eye, staring for a prolonged period in silence. As they sit and stare, the client’s mind races. After hours, she breaks down into tears. She hugs Mimi and then leaves, still feeling the devastating effects of the session as she walks down the street.

Nick visits his old family farm. The chestnut tree has been cut down, but dozens of chestnuts shoots appear around the dead stump. Nick knows these new trees will live just long enough to be infected by the blight and keep the disease alive. There is no one in the house, so he waits. When no one arrives, he digs up the buried art and remembers how he met Olivia. He finds the collection of photographs of the chestnut tree. The police arrive but, after a cursory check, allow him to leave. No one cares about his art.

Neelay discusses his Midas problem with the game’s project managers. All the proposed solutions merely postpone the issue. Neelay wants to change how the game functions, introducing permadeath, environmentalism, and real-life issues. The players have so much invested in the game, they will have to find solutions and their aim will be to grow the world, rather than themselves. The project managers all vote against it, and Neelay learns what it feels like “to be eaten alive by his own insatiable offspring” (377).

In the ghost town, Douggie meets a young woman who feigns interest in his stories. When he finishes, she asks where she can camp. He invites her into his cabin, and she tries to seduce him. Douggie refuses but offers her his bed for the night. Later, he sees a light under the door and wonders what she is reading. She leaves the next morning and, two months later, the police arrive to arrest Douggie. The woman read his memoirs and told the police about his crimes. The police want to know the real names of those involved.

Ray asks Dorothy about a tree outside the window. Together, they spend an afternoon determining its species. They find out that it is an eastern white pine and, that night, she reads to him the history of the tree, which involves wars, colonialism, and the slave trade.

Patty thinks of Dennis as she works on her latest book. It concerns her travels and work at the seed bank, as well as her warnings of the future. She sends the handwritten pages to be typed up, reads in bed, and says goodnight to Dennis.

Adam is now a professor at NYU. Walking around New York, he passes by the Occupy Wall Street protest and the space where the Twin Towers once stood. Adam now has a five-year-old son and the attacks feel younger than the boy. He runs into Douggie and the two talk, discussing old times. Douggie seems nervous as Adam asks whether he is in touch with the others; Adam has seen art reminiscent of Nick’s style around the country. Adam worries that their destruction accomplished nothing, but Douggie insists that Olivia would have done it all again. They discuss Olivia and then part ways, knowing they will likely never see one another again.

Neelay returns to the Stanford garden that first inspired him, but the trees are quiet this time. He checks his phone, a device that he resents. His personal AI has something to show him. It has been trained to search for anything of interest to him, including Patty’s book. Neelay watches a 20-second video of a chestnut tree passing through a century of images, followed by a short poem. Neelay wonders whether he has just seen the handiwork of God.

Patty examines an invitation to speak at a conference regarding sustainability and trees. She deplores the tone of the conference, worrying that the attendees simply want a technological solution to the world’s problems. But looking through the guest list, she wonders whether she might actually be able to convert the important people to her cause. She takes a nighttime walk through the forest and notes its suffering. She looks to the memory of Dennis to guide her.

Adam is giving a lecture when he spies FBI agents at the back of the room; he has been dreading this day. As he lectures, he understands that the meeting with Douggie was not a chance encounter and his old friend had been wearing a wire. The lecture ends, and Adam goes to meet the agents. They lead him away in handcuffs, and as he is driven away, he examines the trees, taking in as much as he can while he still has a view of the outside world.

Ray and Dorothy play a new game, in which they identify the species of tree from samples she collects outside. Each time they discover a new species, they pause to learn everything they can. One day, much to Dorothy’s bafflement, they find a supposedly extinct American chestnut. Dorothy discovers Patty’s book, and they read it together. Ray suggests that the chestnut tree planted in their garden is the daughter they always wanted.

Patty passes through airport security. They ask her about her sample collection kit and a tub of liquid that she describes as vegetable broth. The security guard confiscates both. She flies to the location of the conference, but there is no driver to meet her. She waits in the airport, feeding a sparrow that lives in the rafters. Finally, her driver arrives. At the campus in Pennsylvania, she wanders the local forests.

Adam is placed in a cell. When he phones his wife, Lori, she is surprised to hear from him. At first, she does not believe what has happened. She visits the next day and says she knows that he did not commit the crimes; she has already begun to search for a lawyer.

In his dreams, Douggie continues to search for Mimi. He has been sentenced to seven years in prison but wants to explain what happened to the woman who turned him into a radical. He spent two days in jail, not talking, before the FBI made him an offer: name one name and his sentence will be greatly reduced, and all other charges against the other perpetrators will be dropped. He chose to name Adam, who always seemed “like an infiltrator” (409).

Patty delivers her lecture. She moves from Noah (who saved the animals but not the plants) to Rockefeller (whose “just a little more” (410) ideology has help plundered America’s forests). Her criticism of the capitalist sacking of the world’s natural resources leads people to walk out. She talks about interconnected ecosystems that are unravelling due to human activity. She knows her audience are not pleased with what she is saying. She believes that the answer to the planet’s problems lays with the trees.

Adam is released into home detention. He wears a tracking bracelet on his ankle. The sight of the device traumatizes his son, so the child is sent to stay with his grandparents. Outside, Adam sees environmentalists painting a giant picture of a tree over parked cars and pavement. He goes downstairs, but as soon as he exits his building, the tracking bracelet begins to shriek, and he retreats. His tracking clerk chides him. When Lori arrives home, she finally accepts the truth about what Adam has done.

Dorothy and Ray watch the trees in their garden from inside Ray’s bedroom. They can almost see their makeshift daughter in the movement of the trees. They decide to let the garden grow wild as a gift to the tree.

Adam and Lori argue. She wants him to give the police information about Nick or Mimi to reduce his prison sentence. He is a father, she tells him, and his son needs him. But Adam feels distant from his child and is reluctant. Lori storms out. Left alone, Adam trips and falls. He bites through his lip and, badly injured, looks out of the window and imagines America as a giant forest. He begins to go and get help from outside but remembers the ankle bracelet. Adam returns home, “the only habitat allowed him, his lone biome for a long time to come” (420).

Mimi attends Patty’s lecture and is transfixed. Patty places a plant into a glass of water and holds it up. Mimi catches Patty’s eye and begins to understand everything.

Patty raises the glass to her audience, and the stunned crowd is quiet. Commotion breaks out to the side of the stage, and a man in a wheelchair tries to stand to stop her. Patty drinks, toasting “to unsuicide” (423). She dies on the stage.

Adam attends court. Lori is present, but his son is not. The judge asks Adam how he pleads.

The Brinkman Woodlands Restoration Project has made a lot of people angry, but Dorothy does not care. Now almost 70, she loves her overgrown, tangled garden. She ignores the government’s demands to clean it up, and Ray has slowly prepared a thorough defense of their property rights. There is an angry knock at her door. Dorothy opens it to find a landscaper, sent by the city. Pitying the young man, Dorothy sends him away. She knows that this is not the end, but she relishes the fight.

In court, the prosecution demands an “extraordinary sentence” (426) for Adam. Despite his lawyers’ best efforts, Adam is demonstrably guilty. When he is offered the opportunity for his thoughts, Adam says that “soon we’ll know if we were right or wrong” (427). He is sentenced to two consecutive terms of 70 years. This is nothing, he thinks, compared to the life of a tree.