A spellbinding eco fable for fans of David Mitchell, Richard Powers, and Margaret Atwood.

Structured like the rings of a tree, this remarkable novel moves from a futuristic world in which only one forest remains to the start of the twentieth century, where two young boys survive a train crash, setting them on a path that will forever change their lives and the lives of those around them.

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‘An arresting eco-parable.’

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‘There are plenty of visionary moments laced into [Christie’s] shape-shifting narrative … Greenwood penetrates to the core of things.’

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‘A lyrical, meditative take on a world in which forests have become such rare commodities that they are turned into therapeutic retreats for the very wealthy.’

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‘Christie skillfully teases out the details in a page-turner of a saga that complements sylvan books such as Sometimes a Great Notion and The Overstory … Beguilingly structured, elegantly written: eco-apocalyptic but with hope that somehow we’ll make it.’ STARRED REVIEW

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‘This is one of ‘those’ books. One of ‘those’ books that grabs your heart and soul and fills you up to overflowing with the immensity of all that’s contained within its pages.’

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‘[An] eerily real-feeling future.’

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‘Rich with evocative descriptions of West Coast wilderness and anchored by a deep visceral bond to the trees that sustain us all, Greenwood is a literary page-turner that manages to be both nostalgic and modern, personal and political, intimately human and big-picture historical. In an era of so much uncertainty, it is comforting to see novelists begin to work through the biggest issue of our age. And, in this case, convert our collective suffering into brilliant, beauty-filled art.’

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‘[S]tructured like the growth rings of a tree, spanning generation ... [Greenwood] looks at families, love and secrets against the backdrop of the 'magic' of trees.’

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‘Greenwood is a family story, fractured and often contradictory (as the best family stories usually are ... bring[ing] together the intimate and the sweeping, the human world and the natural, the past and the future.’

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‘Greenwood is a sprawling and ambitious novel of industrial greed, climate catastrophe, familial bonds and a little bit of hope.’

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‘Whatever 2038 is really like when it arrives, Canadians and others will still be reading Greenwood for its high energy, its memorable characters, and its anguished love for the forests.’

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‘A remarkable achievement.’

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‘Astonishing … What makes Greenwood an essential climate-change novel is that, rather than obsessing over a single, final apocalypse to come, it attempts something much harder and more ambitious: to transcend altogether the tropes of victim and antagonist … And to instead present humanity and nature as deeply, ultimately, endlessly interconnected … Greenwood offers a rare sentiment in the climate emergency: hope.’

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‘This superb family saga will satisfy fans of Richard Powers’s The Overstory while offering a convincing vision of potential ecological destruction.’

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‘Greenwood is a compulsively readable, beautifully observed, deeply felt and rich tale that roves across Canadian history and landscape.’

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‘Greenwood is a brilliant novel that demonstrates the ghastly effects of treating the environment as a commodity. This really is a novel for our times.’

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‘[A] timely, moving novel.’

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‘An epic, ambitious quilt of themes, stitched together by the compelling arc of the family.’

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‘A compulsively readable, beautifully observed, deeply felt and rich tale that roves across Canadian history and landscape.’

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‘An absorbing and original epic.’

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‘[W]ith the expert, deft hands of a seasoned carpenter, author Michael Christie carefully and methodically pieces together a story as intricate as the rings within a tree. The result is a deeply compelling novel of family and memory … Christie creates a sense of poetic, organic symmetry through rich characters and evocative, almost tactile descriptions … [W]hat stands out most by the end is the way in which Christie has been able to evoke and give voice to the way the cumulative effect of time and memory weighs on us all in ways both uplifting and terrifying. Greenwood is a towering, profound novel about the things that endure even as the world seems to be moving on.’

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‘[E]ven if you’re suffering from what you might call Literary Tree Fatigue, Christie’s novel is worth reading, in part because it’s a clever mash-up of genres that distinguishes itself from its literary cousins and earns its bulk … broad messages aside, the heart of the novel is a winning and energetic chase story … When do we choose self-preservation, and when do we choose survival in a broader sense? The question has never gone away, but Greenwood closes with the message that it’s increasingly urgent.’

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‘A riveting tale of love, greed, sacrifice and betrayal – and an ode to the beauty of trees.’

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‘Greenwood’s powerful narratives, fascinating characters, and lovely prose full of beautiful specificity, takes on our contemporary fears for the world. This is one of those novels you thrust at friends and insist: You have to read this!’ FIVE STARS

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‘An impressive ecological novel … From the future, to the present, the past and back again, Greenwood is a moving novel of family sacrifice and love for a natural world.’

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‘Christie dazzles with this richly woven historical tracking five generations of the ‘trouble-plagued’ Greenwood clan and the environmental devastation wrought by its lucrative timber empire … [A] spellbinding family saga reflecting fiction's intensifying interest in the climate crisis as well as humanity's innate desire to make amends for past wrongs and start anew.’ STARRED REVIEW

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‘A lively eco-parable.’