“Every tree is held up by its own history, the very bones of its ancestors…Jake has gained a new awareness of how her life is being held up by unseen layers, girded by lives that came before her own. And by a series of crimes and miracles, accidents and choices, sacrifices and mistakes, all of which have landed her in this particular body and delivered her to this day”.  And so, we find ourself as reader, embroiled in the history of several generations of the Greenwood family, as we trace their mixed fortunes from the great depression through to a dystopian future of a ruined planet and the corporate greed that has destroyed it. 

The theme of this book and the reason why it has been reviewed here is the connection to trees, woodland and forestry which runs through the narrative. The dependence on trees manifests itself in the chosen professions of each generation of the Greenwood family. From small landowner and wood cutter; to business tycoon, environmental campaigner, carpenter and research scientist. The woodland theme is ever present and is sure to engage those who have an interest in trees and their changing role in our world over time.

I don’t propose to give away the details of the story here but suffice to say that I found it interesting enough to keep me looking forward to the next instalment as an unchallenging bedtime read. In this sense it accomplishes its principle aim as a novel in engaging the reader but whether it succeeds any further in providing either historical insight or poignant social comment on the environment, will be up to others to make their own judgement.

“What are families other than fictions? Stories told about a particular cluster of people for a particular reason? And like all stories, families are not born, they’re invented, pieced together from love and lies and nothing else. And through these messy means, so too might this poor, destitute child become -for good and for ill- a Greenwood.”

Greenwood is frequently sentimental and at times outright mawkish and not quite artful enough to convey any real depth of emotion, especially with regard to parenthood, death and particularly so with trees. I also felt there was a limited success in the treatment of the great depression and the effect this had on the places that we are taken to on our journey across the impoverished Canadian landscape of the early twentieth century. There was a missed opportunity here for greater descriptive flair with the writing, to fully evoke the abject misery of a brutalised population.   The plot itself also relied a little heavily on contrivance and simplification to explain the actions of the protagonists…why was RJ Holt so keen to recover a journal that didn’t seem to contain anything particularly incriminating? And why didn’t Jake indulge the specious legal ramblings of Silas and save her island, the trees and humanity itself?

“And, most important of all, she’ll establish a lab in this very office and hire Knut back, along with the world’s brightest minds in dendrology, and together they’ll discover a cure for the withering that will save the trees not only here, but everywhere.”

And so it was, that as we cantered towards the final chapters at a rewarding pace, I experienced a sinking feeling that the storyline was going to just peter out rather than conclude… a little like the Greenwood family itself and the ravaged earth that they had lived on.