Reflections on The Overstory / Patty Westerford
The following words form the first trickles of thought and feeling inspired by The Overstory. Richard Powers won a Pulitzer for this novel in 2019. I have no idea why I didn’t hear about it sooner. It, a massive, walking, talking forest of a book that makes reference more than once to Macbeth’s nightmare on-the-move forest, only made it to this Vermont, rural, woodsy cabin this spring. I haven’t finished reading it. I will likely never finish reading The Overstory.
There are writers who love characters and writers who love places and writers who love ideas and writers who love Earth. I suspect Richard Powers loves all of these and so much I can’t conceive of loving because I have not lived his experience of the world. The one experience I share with him, the love of and gratitude and reverence for the greater than human world, is enough to keep me faithful to the story, word after word, line after line, page after page.
Continue reading Earth Day 2025: Toward Remembering the Rest of Our Family