A magnificent generational saga that charts a family s rise and fall, its secrets and inherited crimes, from one of Canada s most acclaimed novelists

Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize A rugged, riveting novel . . . This superb family saga will satisfy fans of Richard Powers s The Overstory. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

There are plenty of visionary moments laced into [Christie s] shape-shifting narrative. . . . Greenwood penetrates to the core of things. The New York Times Book Review

It s 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world s last remaining forests. It s 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It s 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father s once vast and violent timber empire. It s 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple-syrup camp squat, when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime, secrets, and betrayal that will cling to his family for decades.

And throughout, there are trees: a steady, silent pulse thrumming beneath Christie s effortless sentences, working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival. A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood, and blood and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.

Autorentext

Michael Christie

Klappentext

"It's 2034 and Jake Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world's last remaining forests. It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion. It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire. It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades. And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival. A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood--and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light"--

Leseprobe
2038

THE GREENWOOD

ARBOREAL CATHEDRAL

They come for the trees.

To smell their needles. To caress their bark. To be regenerated in the humbling loom of their shadows. To stand mutely in their leafy churches and pray to their thousand-year-old souls.

From the world s dust-choked cities they venture to this exclusive arboreal resort a remote forested island off the Pacific Rim of British Columbia to be transformed, renewed, and reconnected. To be reminded that the Earth s once-thundering green heart has not flatlined, that the soul of all living things has not come to dust and that it isn t too late and that all is not lost. They come here to the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral to ingest this outrageous lie, and it s Jake Greenwood s job as Forest Guide to spoon-feed it to them.

God s Middle Finger

As first light trickles through the branches, Jake greets this morning s group of Pilgrims at the trailhead. Today, she ll lead them out among the sky-high spires of Douglas fir and Western red cedar, between granite outcrops plush with electric green moss, to the old-growth trees, where epiphany awaits. Given the forecasted rain, the dozen Pilgrims are all swaddled in complimentary Leafskin, the shimmery yet breathable new fabric that s replaced Gore-Tex, nano-engineered to mimic the way leaves bead and repel water. Though the Cathedral has issued Jake her own Leafskin jacket, she seldom wears it for fear of damaging company property; she s already deep enough in debt without having to worry about a costly replacement. Yet trudging through the drizzling rain that begins just after they set out on the trail, Jake wishes she d made an exception today.

Despite the liter of ink-black coffee she gulped before work this morning, Jake s hungover brain is taffy-like, and it throbs in painful synchronization with every step she takes. Though she s woefully unprepared for public speaking, once they reach the first glades of old-growth she begins her usual introduction.

Welcome to the beating heart of the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, she says in a loud, theatrical voice. You re standing on fifty-seven square kilometers of one of the last remaining old-growth forests on Earth. Immediately, the Pilgrims brandish their phones and commence to feverishly thumb their screens. Jake never knows whether they re fact-checking her statements, posting breathless exclamations of wonder, or doing something entirely unrelated to the tour.

These trees act like huge air filters, she carries on. Their needles suck up dust, hydrocarbons, and other toxic particles, and breathe out pure oxygen, rich with phytoncides, the chemicals that have been found to drop our blood pressure and slow our heart rates. Just one of these mature firs can generate the daily oxygen required by four adult humans. On cue, the Pilgrims begin to video themselves taking deep breaths through their noses.

While Jake is free to mention the Earth s rampant dust storms in the abstract, it s Cathedral policy never to speak of their cause: the Great Withering the wave of fungal blights and insect infestations that rolled over the world s forests ten years ago, decimating hectare after hectare. The Pilgrims have come to relax and forget about the Withering, and it s her job (and jobs, she s aware, are currently in short supply) to ensure they do.

Following her introduction, she coaxes the Pilgrims a few miles west, into a grove of proper old-growth giants, whose trunks bulge wider than mid-sized cars. These are trees of such immensity and grandeur they seem unreal, like film props or monuments. In the presence of such giants, the Pilgrims assume hushed, reverent tones. Official Holtcorp policy is to refer to the forest as the C