The last Hoel, Nicholas, returns to the farm on Christmas day to find his entire family has perished from propane asphyxiation. On the Hoel farm in Iowa, a sentinel chestnut tree survives the blight, becoming a beloved tree for four generations of Hoels. The Overstory is divided into four sections, titled 'roots', 'trunk', 'crown', and 'seeds', mirroring the life cycle of a tree. Westerford pens the fictional novel The Secret Forest, whose title mirrors other popular texts such as The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by German forester Peter Wohlleben, The Secret Life of Trees by British science writer Colin Tudge, and Finding the Mother Tree by Simard herself. Patricia Westerford, one of the novel's central characters, was heavily inspired by the life and work of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Reviews of the novel have been mostly positive, with praise of the structure, writing, and compelling reading experience. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize on Septem and won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction on April 15, 2019, as well as the William Dean Howells Medal in 2020. The Overstory was a contender for multiple awards. Powers was inspired to write the work while teaching at Stanford University, after he encountered giant redwood trees for the first time.

The book is about nine Americans whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of forests. The Overstory is a novel by Richard Powers published in 2018 by W.

The overstory barnes and noble