“The Overstory” is a Planetary Call-to-Arms
By Zach Tomci
Imagine an organism billions of years old, constantly changing yet performing the same essential function throughout time. It is outside your window, lying under the cracks of sidewalks and producing the air you breathe in this moment. Through the lens of Richard Powers’s twelfth novel, 2019’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Overstory,” we are challenged to see the natural world in this mystical and reverent way. His story is immediately accessible and relevant, though it spans generations and takes place mostly in the 20th century. It is a story undeniably human; it is a story about us. More accurately, it is a story about the dual existence of humanity alongside the natural world, which Powers argues is just as complex and divine as the gift of human life.