The Overstory

Patty struggles to write the story of her life’s work. She describes the social nature of plants, how “there are no individuals in a forest, no separable events” (206). Her husband Dennis lives 14 miles away, and they see each other once a day. Soon, she will move to the coast and begin teaching again. She goes for a nighttime walk and sits on a familiar log beside a lake. The next morning, she begins to write again, chasing her elusive final chapter. When Dennis arrives at noon, they eat and read what she has written. With his approval, she types up the draft and mails it to her publishers. Six weeks later, her publishers call to congratulate her.

Neelay’s company finishes Mastery. It is his magnum opus. In the company’s new offices, he loads up a game. These days, he sleeps in his chair. Work on a sequel has already begun. Neelay is interviewed by a journalist named Chris who loves the game. He questions Neelay about game addiction and how Neelay feels since his game is destroying so much productivity. Neelay is unfazed. But he has noticed that the rapid growth of the company has led to a loss of control. When they talk about Neelay’s life as the son of immigrants, he dismisses the question. Neelay feels an attraction to Chris but worries that he is too hideous for the feeling to be reciprocated. He describes a future to Chris in which real life—the space outside of computers—will no longer matter.

On Highway 36, the protestors block traffic with black coffins laid on the road. People dressed as animals emerge, unfurling a banner that reads Stop Sacrificing Virgins. The hindered drivers take in the scene. Some laugh, some applaud, some shout insults. Two days later, footage of the protest is on the national news.

After four years at Fortuna College, Adam sits in his final lecture, given by Professor Rabinowski. The students laugh as they listen to the professor discuss the pointlessness of teaching psychology. Midway through the lecture, the professor stumbles out of the auditorium and collapses. Thinking this is part of the lecture, the students do not react, and Rabinowski dies. Adam has been attracted to a fellow student for months. After the lecture, they get a beer together and discuss what happened. His anger scares her, and he never sees her again. Later, he is admitted to a graduate program at Santa Cruz. He discusses his work on cognitive bias with his advisor, Professor Mieke Van Dijk, to whom he is also attracted. He wants his thesis to focus on unblinding, “the personality factors that make it possible for some individuals to wonder how everyone can be so blind” (223). She suggests that he focus on the plants’ rights protests. Adam hates activists but is interested, nevertheless.

Mimi and Douggie arrive at the protestor camp, stunned by the amount and variety of people. She is still surprised that she agreed to come. Immediately, they are swept up in a crowd marching through the woods. The group sing songs as they walk. Douggie frightens Mimi a little, but she respects his desire to protect the forest. They approach the border of the timber company’s territory; those who are not prepared to be arrested stay behind while the others cross over. Mimi and Douggie cross over. She sees the machines and the protest comes up against the workers. The protestors begin to form a human chain around the trees and the logging stops. The police arrive. Mimi is left handcuffed so long that she can no longer contain her urge to urinate. She cries and Douggie comforts her.

Dorothy leaves for her singing lesson, her latest hobby. But Ray suspects that she is having an affair. He is reading an article that questions whether trees have moral rights. Dorothy leaves to meet a man she barely knows, casting herself as “the heroine of my own doomed story” (234) from one of the adultery novels she has read. Ray reads his article, its premise as chaotic and as terrifying as his own life. Driving home, Dorothy feels disgusted with herself. She returns home, and both continue to live out the lie, falling asleep in one another’s arms.

Nick is still surprised by Olivia’s calmness and confidence that they are on the right path. As they walk through the woods, they happen across a grove of apostle trees. Olivia films Nick as he paints over the white mark on the trunks that marks them for felling. Once the tape ends, “no one sees what happens next between the two humans” (239).

Dennis brings Patty her letters, which contain a large check and plenty of fan mail. There is also an interview request from one of the nation’s top public radio shows.

Olivia volunteers to camp up in a tree to save it from being cut down. Nick will not allow her to go alone. They are led to a giant redwood named Mimas, where they replace two others on a platform 200 feet above ground. It takes 20 minutes to climb; the frayed and repaired ropes make Nick nervous, but Olivia is a natural. Soon, they are alone at the top of the tree on the platform made of three doors bolted together with walls made of tarp. A second platform is their supply room and kitchen. They sleep together on the first night and wake up to a breathtaking view. They learn how to live in the tree and explore their new home, venturing out on to the massive branches. There is an entire ecosystem in and around the tree. As the hours pass, Nick sketches Olivia, and they hear logging machinery in the distance. Among the small library, Olivia finds Patty’s book. She reads it aloud. As they lay down to sleep that night, Nick feels as though “his life has reached its zenith” (251). They wake before dawn to the sound of engines below them.

Released from jail, Mimi finds that her employers do not care about her $300 fine. They only care about the work she produces. Nevertheless, she and Douggie join a protest in the Coast Range. They arrive to find no television cameras and the increasingly aggressive logging company. A machine with two protestors handcuffed to the side roars to life and drags the handcuffed women alongside. They scream. Douggie rushes into the violence, telling people to climb into the trees. Before Mimi can join him, she trips and is restrained by a logger. The loggers begin cutting down the trees, not caring about the protestors. Terrified, the protestors begin to flee as the police arrive. One officer pushes Mimi’s face into the dirt as she is arrested. Douggie is the only protestor left, now handcuffed to the tree. In their desperation to cut him down, they cut away his pants, his war wounds now displayed for everyone to see, and pepper spray his groin. He screams in agony. The police finally cut him down and Mimi drives him home. He is too ashamed to let her help him as he lays in her bed, his skin orange for a week.

Neelay’s company releases sequel after sequel to Mastery, each of which improves on the previous iteration. Neelay himself remains in his apartment above the company HQ and is still not satisfied. His body is failing him, full of brittle bones and bedsores. He sends frequent demands for increased realism in the game. The company’s share price rises exponentially. But when he calls his parents, they pester him about his love life. He lies about tells them about one of his caregivers, a woman named Rupal. When he hangs up the phone, he slaps his desk so hard that he breaks a bone and must go to the hospital. 

Patty is summoned as an expert witness in a Portland lawsuit against a logging company. She is anxious, though Dennis reassures her. In the courtroom, he childhood hearing issues return. The opposing lawyer uses the discrediting letter from decades ago to disprove her testimony. Though she feels awful, she fights on. She elaborates on the points of her book, almost as though she is talking to students. When the judge returns after recess, he orders the injunction. Outside, a crowd of demonstrators cheer for Patty. Other members of the crowd—with banners supporting the logging—boo her.

In the cold, dangerous tree, Olivia and Nick hear the loggers shouting up at them, encouraging them to “come down for ten minutes” (266). They decline the offer. Days stretch into weeks as they argue with the loggers below. In the second week, the guide returns and reveals that the replacements have not arrived due to infighting in the protestor camp. He asks Olivia and Nick to stay on for another week. Olivia instantly agrees. Eventually, the loggers stop appearing, as do the re-supplies. It becomes difficult to track the passing days. They read all the books, some twice. One day, Olivia decides to climb to the very top of the tree. One night, a particularly violent shudder sends Nick rolling toward the platform edge. A branch crashes through those below; Olivia screams and clings to the platform tightly. The storm rips through the branches and shakes everything. Olivia screams out to Nick to relax, to become limber like the tree and he does. They scream together into the night. The next morning, loggers appear to make sure they are alive.

Douggie and Mimi plot their next protest. She loves him but is aware that they are “different species” (275). The only thing they have in common is their cause. She warns him about further injuries. Their protests cross into private property, they jeer the police, then they chain themselves into a ring in a corporate foyer. But Mimi and Douggie become separated in the process. The police appear and make a futile attempt to disperse the protestors. The police begin to use pepper spray and the scene becomes chaotic. People scream in agony. The police move from person to person, infecting their eyes with painful chemicals. Douggie shouts out for Mimi. When he sees the police approach her, he frees himself from the chain and runs to help her. Before he can attack, he is thrown to the floor and arrested. A video of the entire event is leaked to the press.

Dennis brings lunch to Patty, as well as the bad news that the injunction she helped to secure has already expired. They talk about the demonstration at the logging corporation HQ and the police violence, which seems like something “out of … not this country” (281). Patty decides to use the money from her book sales to build a seed bank to preserve the seeds of endangered trees.

Neelay and his father meet virtually, inside Neelay’s game. Neelay can barely contain his father’s excitement and desire to see everything. They are in a pre-launch version of the game. It is empty now but will soon be populated by millions of players, each paying $20 a month. Neelay promises to see his father soon, unable to reveal that his body is failing.

Ray watches the news in the bedroom, drowning out the sound of Dorothy in the bathroom. Images from their shared past flash through his mind. The nascent love clashes with the wretched present. She has just told him that she is leaving him, and he struggles to process the idea. He hears shouting from the bathroom and rises to see Dorothy, blood flooding into his cortex.

When Mimi arrives for work, a stranger named Brendan is waiting outside her office. She has been fired and Brendan is to escort her from the premises. Mimi has expected this; her picture has been all over the news. Though she is angry, she knows that the law is on her employer’s side. She packs everything up and leaves. Just before she leaves once and for all, she remembers: her father’s antique scroll. Brendan reluctantly allows her to re-enter and take the scroll.

Douggie is knocked out in a fight in a veterans’ bar. He sits in his car, thinking about where he can go. Mimi is his only option, but he does not know whether their relationship includes late-night, post-fight visits. Still concussed and bleeding, he drives to her house. On the road, he is followed by a truck. It rams his car from behind, and he enters a high-speed chase, eventually managing to escape. He arrives at Mimi’s house to find her drunk. She has trashed her home but, on seeing his damaged face, she drags him into the condo.

Adam climbs a gigantic tree. At the top, he reaches Nick and Olivia’s platform. Adam has already interviewed 250 people for his thesis, and Nick strikes him as being “either deeply depressed or a born-again realist” (293). The couple has been in the tree almost a year. Adam interviews his subjects, whose unencumbered movement so high up makes him worried. Even though it might invalidate his data, Adam cannot help but discuss his thesis with them. They turn the questions on him, asking about the accelerating ecological decline that is affecting the world. Olivia tells him about her death and the voices in her head. Without thinking, Adam mentions that he talks aloud to his sister sometimes, as she disappeared when he was young. As they talk, the sound of trees being cut down hurts Adam in a way he never expected. In the afternoon, the guide returns. He climbs the tree to bring bad news: Mother N and others have been killed. Their office was bombed; the police say that the protestors’ bomb accidently exploded and have blamed domestic terrorism. The guide leaves, but Adam stays the night. In the morning, the loggers return and tell them to leave immediately. A helicopter appears and hovers above them, blasting air, which rocks the platform. Olivia tries to fight the helicopter away. Bulldozers begin to ram the base of the tree. In a moment, Nick and Olivia know that they have no choice. They relent and climb down from the tree. At the base, all three are arrested.

Patty begins work on her seed bank. From his bed, Neelay sends ambitious plans for Mastery 8. Dorothy rides along in the ambulance and sits beside Ray after his brain surgery, hearing her own words over and over. Adam, Nick, and Olivia are held beyond the legally permissible 72 hours. Douggie and Mimi continue to protest together. After being released, Adam, Nick, and Olivia visit the site where their giant redwood once stood. Olivia weeps while touching the stump.

Adam asks Nick and Olivia what they will do next. There is a protest in Oregon, and they invite Adam to join them. He declines in favor of his thesis and, for weeks, works on his data. He wonders whether he should take the questionnaire himself and he cannot focus on anything. At a bar, he gets drunk and walks home. As he passes through a park, a strange object falls onto his head from a tree, but he does not know why.

After being granted a year to finish his dissertation, Adam travels to Oregon. He joins the protestor camp and meets Douggie (now named Doug-fir) and Mimi (now named Mulberry). Adam names himself Maple. Though the camp has no leaders, Nick and Olivia are important figures in the protest. Adam completes an initiation ceremony by repeating a promise to respect and defend “the common cause of all living things” (309). They sit around the campfire singing and sharing stories. Adam is welcomed into the camp and put to work. He stays, long past the point he intended.

The government warns them to leave. A deer is shot, and its “entrails appear just outside the barricade” (311). A group of threatening men arrive, but talking with the protestors diminishes their anger and they leave on good terms. One afternoon, the federal agencies arrive. The protestors are given 10 minutes to leave their fortified camp. Giant machines crush through the camp and the defenses crumble. The police violently arrest people. Mimi, up in a tree, is shaken around by a logging excavator. The tree topples, tearing a wound in Mimi’s cheek and knocking Douggie unconscious. They are helicoptered to a hospital. The protestors leave the site and the logging resumes. A month later, a shed filled with logging machinery “goes up in flames” (315).

Adam and the other protestors review the media reports of their attack on the machinery. Mimi and Douggie’s injuries are barely healed. They bomb another logging company and realize that they have “accomplished more in two nights than [they] did with years of effort” (317). They plot one more attack before they will head their separate ways. They surveil a site in Idaho and, entirely off the grid, begin to construct bombs. Dressed all in black, they head to their target. Under the cover of darkness, they take their five-gallon fuel containers on to the site. Nick paints slogans to be seen by the media. Adam and Douggie mistime their movements, however, and—just for a moment—Adam wonders whether he is doing the right thing. As Nick paints, he is knocked down by the early explosion. He and Douggie race to the scene and find Olivia and Adam on the ground. Olivia is fatally injured. Adam and Nick scuffle, disagreeing over what to do. Mimi tells Nick to get the police, but Olivia disagrees. As they argue about what to do, Olivia dies with Nick beside her.