Greenwood

Jake leads a new group of visitors, called Pilgrims, on a tour of the Cathedral. Though she begrudges the Pilgrims’ privilege and superficial interest in the environment, Jake works as a Forest Guide to pay off her postgraduate student debt. She brings the Pilgrims to see the tallest Douglas fir in the Cathedral, nicknamed “God’s Middle Finger” by her and her colleague, Knut. A celebrity Pilgrim asks Jake to estimate the Douglas fir’s value, but Jake evades the question.

During the tour, Jake notices that two of the firs are sick. She has always been assured of the climate on Greenwood Island but now fears that the Withering may soon reach the Cathedral.

Knut gives a cynical speech to a new batch of Forest Guides, which Jake undermines as part of a routine. Many of the new Forest Guides are from wealthy families and use their Cathedral experiences as stepping stones to larger careers. They challenge Knut’s beliefs about the link between the Withering and climate change, but Knut quickly refutes them. One of the new Guides, Torey, remarks that the job allows them to engage with their passion for the environment.

Jake’s boss, Davidoff, asks her how her tour went. She reports her observation about the sick trees and asks for tools to inspect them further. He warns her not to interfere with the old-growth trees or else she will be apprehended by the island’s private security militia, the Rangers. Davidoff informs Jake that she will lead a private tour the following morning.

During Jake’s childhood, her mother, Meena Bhattacharya, dies in a train accident. Jake moves to Delhi, India, to live with her grandparents. She discovers a box labeled with her estranged father’s name, Liam Greenwood. Meena assured Jake that Liam “tried to make things right in the end” (20). Though she is curious to know more about him, Jake is disappointed to find only a farmland deed, vinyl records, and some woodworking tools inside.

Jake’s love for nature develops through her relationship with the large banyan tree in her backyard. She becomes a frequent visitor to the Dehradun Forest Research Institute and goes on to study at the University of British Columbia. Jake becomes an expert in dendrology, the scientific study of trees. Her PhD studies cause her to fall into debt. At the onset of the Great Withering, she is forced to trek from a conference in the United States to the Canadian town of Estevan in Saskatchewan, where she takes refuge on her father’s farm. She eventually returns to Vancouver, where she learns that her university has closed down. She takes a job as a Cathedral Forest Guide.

After collecting her research tools, Jake finds Corbyn Gallant, the celebrity Pilgrim from that day’s tour, waiting at her cabin. He invites her back to his Villa, where they share an indulgent meal of salmon before having unprotected sex. Corbyn envies Jake for getting to live a “simple life” on Greenwood Island. Jake resents him for patronizing her, so he apologizes. Jake assumes that Corbyn is her private tour client, but she is wrong.

Jake’s private tour client is her ex-fiancé, Silas, whom she abruptly left after college to pursue her academic career. Silas has since shifted away from biology to become a lawyer, and he wants to represent Jake’s claim to Greenwood Island.

In 1934, Jake’s great-grandfather, Harris Greenwood, purchased the island, which was eventually inherited by his daughter, Willow. Willow donated the island to a non-profit organization, which later sold Greenwood to its current corporate owner, Holtcorp. Jake’s claim hinges on the possibility that she isn’t related to Harris Greenwood but to Holtcorp founder R.J. Holt.

Silas entrusts Jake with a diary belonging to Willow Greenwood. Jake returns to her cabin and attempts to read the book but finds the cursive script difficult to parse. She is charmed, however, by the book’s labeling, which spells Willow’s name phonetically.

In 2008, 34-year-old Liam Greenwood falls off scaffolding while working on renovations at a wealthy client’s summer house. Unable to call for an ambulance, he screams over the pain in his hip.

The novel presents a list of groceries: grains, sugar, brown spray paint, a pair of bolt cutters, and cigarettes.

Liam’s mother, Willow, is an environmental activist who ascribes to hippie culture. During Liam’s childhood, Willow brings Liam on her travels to sabotage logging machines. Despite her criticism of bourgeois lifestyles, Willow secretly holds on to aspects of her wealthy background, such as her Chanel perfume.

On his 10th birthday, Willow gives Liam a dream catcher for the second year in a row. Liam secretly destroys the dream catcher and resents her for her failure to give him any real attention. That year, at the Earth Now! Collective Halloween party, which Liam usually attends dressed up as a Douglas fir, he dresses up as a lumberjack.

Liam was hired to refit the ceiling in the house where he’d fallen off the scaffolding. Liam gets work by regularly advertising his services in The New Yorker using the slogan “Live Authentically.” To raise his prices, Liam uses reclaimed wood salvaged from the structures of his great-aunt Temple’s farm in Estevan.

Liam can’t rely on his helper, Alvarez, who is lying sick in their work van, so Liam crawls out of the house to reach the vehicle.

As a teenager, Liam decides that he wants to be a carpenter, much to Willow’s dismay. Liam finds initial success installing skylights as a contractor, though an injury causes him to develop an addiction to oxycodone. When insurance companies repossess his business assets, he moves back into his mother’s van to recover. He starts working on a condo construction team but soon returns to contract work, remodeling commercial establishments with fine woodwork.

He moves to New York to work with corporate clients, which is when he meets Meena Bhattacharya, a visiting musician from Los Angeles. They start dating, traveling upstate to collect reclaimed wood for Liam’s work. Liam admires her willfulness and sees her work as a musician on equal terms with his own work as a carpenter. Before Meena moves back to Los Angeles, Liam spends his savings on a house in Fort Greene. She promises to return regularly, and when she fails to do so, Liam’s insecurities force him to renovate the entire house.

Liam asks Willow whether she loves him more than the forests. Willow answers that nature is greater than any single person—including Liam—no matter how good they are.

Meena returns to New York and shows Liam a Stradivarius viola that a Russian art patron has loaned to her. Liam admires the viola’s craft, which makes him extremely anxious over its value. He conducts obsessive research on the viola to stave off his insecurities and a relapse of his oxycodone addiction.

When he learns that modern wood can be used to replicate Stradivari’s woodwork techniques, Liam devotes himself to making a viola for Meena. Meena is overwhelmed when he gives it to her on her birthday, primarily because she assumed Liam was working on a project that he was invested in for his own sake. Liam explains that the viola will allow her to stay in New York more rather than travel to play loaned instruments. Meena reiterates that she plays and travels for her own sake, not for anyone else’s. This upsets him, and he spends the night destroying the viola with his van.

Sometime after Meena leaves, Liam loses his home in the 2007-2008 financial crisis. He starts living in his van as a traveling contractor.

Liam finally reaches his work van, where he learns that Alvarez has abandoned him. He wonders if he might die from his injury and then remembers how Willow died of lung cancer. He decides to drive to the hospital himself, worried that the longer he sits in his van, the more he’ll remember the daughter he’s never met.

While visiting the Edmonton Correctional Institution, 39-year-old Willow Greenwood is ashamed of the anti-environmental legacy behind her family name. She is early into her career as an activist, having recently sabotaged three logging harvesters. This puts her at odds with her environmental group, the Earth Now! Collective, which prefers protest to direct action. She fears that either the police or her last boyfriend, Sage, is following her.

Willow is visiting the prison because her estranged father, Harris, has asked her to pick up her uncle, Everett, upon his release. Willow accepts Harris’s request after he offers her unrestricted access to Greenwood Island, where she can seek refuge from the police. Thanks to a sustained correspondence in her childhood, Willow has always felt closer to Everett than to Harris. Nevertheless, she is unaware of the reasons for his incarceration.

Willow is surprised by Everett’s pleasant appearance. She explains that because she has cut ties with her father, she lives in her van. Everett asks her to bring him to Vancouver for a parole appointment. He plans to fly to Saskatchewan afterward to take care of personal business.

On the drive to Vancouver, Willow and Everett try to dispel the awkward silence with small talk. Willow explains that she dropped out of Yale to become an environmentalist after reading Our Plundered Planet, a 1948 book by the American conservationist Fairfield Osborn. Everett talks about being moved around to different prisons during his incarceration. They thank each other for the correspondence and then relate over the time they’ve each spent in incarceration. Willow gives Everett an idea of the way the world has changed since he was arrested during the Great Depression.

Willow pulls over to make dinner in the van. Everett recalls something from Willow’s childhood, but when Willow probes into it, he recants his statement, claiming that he’d misremembered something Harris had told him.

They set up camp for the night, and when Willow asks about his relationship with Harris, Everett admits that Harris offended him in an unspecified way that he later came to understand. Willow assumes it has to do with protecting his finances. Later, while telling Willow how happy he is to see her, Everett accidentally calls her “Pod,” a pet name he gave her as a baby. Willow calls him out on it, so Everett apologizes, promising not to bring it up again.

When they reach Vancouver, Willow asks Everett why he is going to Saskatchewan. Everett is looking for a woman to retrieve an important book he lent her many years earlier. He indicates that the book will be important to Willow as well, which is why he hopes to give it to her afterward. She tells him that because she’ll be hiding out on Greenwood Island, he can send it to Harris.

After parting ways, she suddenly remembers that one of Everett’s earliest letters indicated that he had gone to prison because he had taken something that could never belong to him. She dismisses her uncle’s affectionate behavior.

Everett Greenwood hears someone crying outside throughout the night. Everett lives in a forest shack that he built after returning to Canada from the First World War. The following morning, he is going out to tap syrup from sugar maples when he finds a cloth hanging from one of his regular trees. He finds a baby sleeping inside.

An enforcer named Harvey Lomax drives his employer, R.J. Holt, to his country estate. It is an important day, which is why Lomax has filled the backseat of his car with gifts. Lomax is an unusually large man, whose size forces him to frequently suffer from aches and pains.

Mr. Holt shares his woes over failing to have any children with his wife. Lomax, who has seven children, gives him advice, which seems to cheer his boss up. Mr. Holt is worried over the fate of his corporate empire, which is suffering the effects of the Great Depression. They discuss a woman named Euphemia Baxter, who was previously Holt’s employee until he began an affair with her. Euphemia became pregnant and has recently given birth to a girl. Holt has offered to adopt the child for a sum of money. Euphemia has been staying in Holt’s country house while awaiting childbirth.

Lomax and Holt break down the door to Euphemia’s room and learn that she is missing. They call for a search party when Holt suspects that Euphemia has had second thoughts. He searches for her journal, but Euphemia seems to have taken it with her. The journal likely contains an account of not only Holt’s affair but also his physical abuse, which could damage his reputation.

Everett takes the baby back to his shack and builds a fire to warm them. The baby soon wakes up crying, and Everett tries to placate the baby with goat’s milk. He then goes to bed, hoping the child will be gone by the time he wakes up.

Lomax goes home, checking in on the search party’s progress throughout the evening. Because of the pain caused by breaking down the door to Euphemia’s room, he briefly smokes an opium-laced cigar for relief.

Holt orders Lomax to investigate Euphemia’s apartment, but Lomax only finds the empty slipcase for Euphemia’s journal. Lomax considers smoking again, but when he remembers his absent, working-class father who had an opium addiction, he throws the cigar away instead. He hopes that the search party will find Euphemia and her journal before Holt can learn of Lomax’s failure.