How do we make sense of climate crisis? Michael Christie's Greenwood traces disaster through a family tree
Actor Keegan Connor Tracy is championing Greenwood on March 27-30
Michael Christie hopes his Canada Reads contender Greenwood can reawaken readers to the "complexity, beauty and majesty" of trees.
"This year, if a scientist said, 'I've solved climate change: I've created an organism that replicates itself, traps carbon, produces oxygen, cleans the air, provides us with fruit and building materials and we don't need to do anything,' they would be heralded as a genius. We do take trees for granted," Christie said in an interview on The Next Chapter.
The author's reverence for trees grew into Greenwood, an epic tale spanning several generations of a West Coast family.
The novel begins in the year 2038 when most of the world has suffered from an environmental collapse. Yet, on a remote island with 1,000-year-old trees, Jacinda Greenwood, known as Jake, works as a tour guide for the ultra-rich in one of the world's last remaining old-growth forests. From there, the novel jumps through time as you learn more about Jake, her family and how secrets and lies can have an impact for generations.
Christie is a Victoria-based author and carpenter. His 2011 short story collection The Beggar's Garden won the City of Vancouver Book Award and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His 2015 novel If I Fall, If I Die won the Northern Lit Award and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
When Greenwood was first published in 2019, it made the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist and won the 2020 Crime Writers of Canada Award for best novel.
Now, Canada Reads 2023 adds another ring around the life of the book with actor and filmmaker Keegan Connor Tracy set to champion the novel.
Canada Reads 2023 will take place on March 27-30. The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBC Books.
Growing Greenwood
Michael Christie turned a tree in his yard into a 512-page novel.
Well, sort of. When the author cut down a tree on his Galiano Island property, he looked at its stump and noticed that the story of the tree's life was contained within its growth rings.
"The most recent rings were on the outside and back to the middle of the stump were the rings of the very beginnings of the tree. I thought this was an interesting way to tell a story," Christie told CBC's Jason D'Souza in an interview.
Mirroring the growth rings, he structured Greenwood so that the story begins in the near-future, travels back in time and then as the novel progresses, jumps back out to the future again.
Choosing a character is the part of writing that's closest to love in a way. You want to write about someone that you love because you're going to spend a long time with them.- Michael Christie
The author told D'Souza that keeping track of the storyline proved "dizzyingly complicated."
"I wrote the sections out of order so if you cut something later on, it's almost like a bad time travel movie — you have to go back and fix things in the past to make everything jive… It's a real juggling act to keep a narrative like that in the air," Christie explained.
His efforts were worth it. Spanning 130 years, the story centres on the Greenwood family who, across generations, each find themselves connected to trees in some way.
There's Jake Greenwood, a scientist and tour guide to elite eco-tourists in 2038; Liam Greenwood, a carpenter struggling with addiction in 2008; Harris Greenwood, a lumber tycoon, and his daughter Willow Greenwood, an environmental activist recently released from jail in 1974; and Everett Greenwood, a World War One Veteran who journeys across Canada in 1934.
"I've been fascinated by trees in general for a long time but also the people who are obsessed with them," Christie said in conversation with Canada Reads contender Keegan Connor Tracy.
"Choosing a character is the part of writing that's closest to love in a way. You want to write about someone that you love because you're going to spend a long time with them."
Similiar to its characters, the themes of the novel also grew from love.
"Prior to the writing of this novel, I lost both of my parents and I also had two children," Christie told Ryan B. Patrick on The Next Chapter.
"It was a very wonderful and difficult time to see these two beloved people leave the stage of life and see these two equally beloved people come on to the stage of life. It really got me thinking about my place in this intergenerational chain and about intergenerational relationships and inheritances.
"It's a big theme of the book and trauma is, too. The way that pain, suffering and dysfunction can be passed from generation to generation is something that interests me a great deal. As it often happens, [that thinking] made its way into my work."
LISTEN | Michael Christie on Greenwood and the narrative power of trees:
Writing the future into fiction
"It's a story about a family tree but then also, the story of trees," Christie told D'Souza.
Growing up surrounded by trees in northern Ontario and now living in British Columbia, Christie's love for trees inspired Greenwood — but so did his concern.
In the novel, an apocalyptic event known as the "Great Withering" threatens the world's climate. Characterized by fungal blights, fires and other environmental catastrophes that decimate Earth's forests, Christie projected the fictional event happening only fifteen years from now.
Hope is an imperative and a responsibility, especially as someone who has children. We must not just give up.- Michael Christie
"Unfortunately, this calamity didn't require that much imagination. The evidence of the beginnings of the 'Great Withering' are already around us," Christie told Ryan B. Patrick on The Next Chapter.
"We think of trees as these wonderfully resilient organisms: they live long; they tower over us. They're beautiful beyond measure but at the same time, they're finely tuned to their microclimate, to the climate zones that they live in. So they're actually very vulnerable to the effects of climate change."
On Galiano Island where Christie wrote the novel, he says that many of the Western red cedars are already dying due to drought stress.
"So it's the work of imagination, but unfortunately it's also not," Christie said.
While the author writes a bleak future, he also makes space for hope.
"When you really dig into the data, it's easy to be presented with a very dark picture of where we're going and the inevitability of what's happening. But at the same time, I think hope is an imperative and a responsibility, especially as someone who has children. We must not just give up," Christie told The Next Chapter.
"While presenting a very broken view of the future, this book also presents some strategies and forces that can hopefully allow us to avoid that future. I'm thinking particularly of our community-building and our interconnectedness — that's something that's demonstrated again and again in the book."
Reaching Canada coast to coast
When asked what it means to have his work championed on Canada Reads, Christie told The Next Chapter, "the book came out in 2019 so it's been a nice gust of wind in the Greenwood sails. The best part about [Canada Reads] is it generates a country-wide discussion about literature."
It's a national discussion Tracy will be at the helm of as she prepares to face off against the other four contenders on March 27-30.
Tracy is an actor, director and writer from British Columbia. She has starred in the TV show Once Upon a Time as the Blue Fairy and as Belle in Disney's popular Descendants film franchise. She has also appeared in the TV series The Magicians, Bates Motel, Supernatural and the horror film Z.
She is the author of the children's book This is a Job for Mommy! Her first short film, the bilingual The Girl/La Fille won the Jury President Award at the Galactic Imaginarium Festival and the best indie short at the Vegas Movie Awards.
The filmmaker told Christie she chose Greenwood because "this book really felt Canadian. Not only because it goes from coast to coast and describes the landscape in such lush fashion but because at its heart, it's a family story."
Soon, readers from coast to coast will have their chance to tune in and weigh in on what Greenwood means to them.
WATCH | Michael Christie and Keegan Connor Tracy discuss Greenwood and the importance of trees:
Christie's and Tracy's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
