Richard Powers, William Heineman, R290

This is a pageturning adventure, tracking its protagonists as their vastly different life stories unfold. Each of them is drawn to protect California’s endangered giant Redwoods. The complex organism that is a forest is revealed to the reader through each character’s personal engagement with trees. A significant character, Plant Patty, aka Dr Patricia Westerford, discovers through rigorous research what we should always have known: trees depend on each other, defend each other, entwine their roots and exchange sap and pass on messages from one species to another. They use air and soil for these communications. The forest is not a bunch of trees; it is a single living sentient organism. History and fable, ecology and biology, genetics, environment and human nature — Powers talks about everything that contributes to making planet Earth what it is.