The Overstory

What if the most important relationships in your life aren't with other people but with beings you've barely noticed—trees? Richard Powers' Pulitzer Prize-winning The Overstory weaves together nine strangers whose lives become intertwined with trees and the environmental movement, revealing a vast, slow, interconnected world that exists alongside ours—one we've learned not to see but desperately need to remember.

This isn't a conventional environmental novel—it's a profound meditation on attention, connection, and what it means to discover yourself by discovering your place in the larger-than-human world. Through characters who range from a scientist studying tree communication to activists risking everything to save ancient forests, Powers explores how we become who we are through relationship with the living world, how paying attention changes what we see, and why self-discovery might require looking beyond the human entirely. This is a novel about learning to see—and once you see, learning to act.

What You'll Discover

• Nine interwoven stories of people awakening to the intelligence and beauty of trees
• How trees communicate, cooperate, and create vast underground networks of connection
• The Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and the cost of environmental activism
• Why paying attention to the natural world transforms how you see yourself and your life
• A sweeping narrative that moves from antebellum New York to contemporary ecological crisis
• Literary fiction that asks: What is your relationship to the living world?

Powers writes with scientific precision and poetic beauty, creating a novel that's both deeply researched and profoundly moving. The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize because it does what great literature does—it changes how you see the world and, in doing so, changes who you are. This is self-discovery through ecological awakening—learning who you are by learning where you are and what you're part of.

What would change if you truly saw trees? Who would you become if you recognized your place in the living world? Powers' masterwork offers a transformative reading experience for anyone ready to see beyond the human and discover themselves as part of something vast, ancient, and alive.

Perfect for: Readers interested in environmental literature and ecological awareness, those seeking fiction that transforms perspective, people drawn to interconnected narratives and literary ambition, anyone questioning their relationship to the natural world, readers committed to seeing beyond human-centered stories.

Paperback edition. Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. A sweeping, transformative novel about trees, activism, and discovering your place in the larger-than-human world.