“To be a friend of the earth, you have to be an enemy of the
people.” This is the mantra of Ty
Tierwater, an eco-terrorist in the 1980s who vandalizes logging equipment and
who, along with others, blocks a logging road by standing in cement. These stunts, including a three-year
tree-sitting protest by Ty’s daughter, seem crazy, but we also see Ty in his
mid 70s in the year 2025, when the climate change apocalypse has arrived;
almost all animals are extinct and the weather is either a monsoon or 130
degrees F. The younger Ty may be a
vandal with a cause, but his righteous indignation frequently gets the better
of him, particularly when he starts to feel useless, landing him in jail and
his daughter in foster care. The purpose
of these stunts is to gain media attention, but the bottom line is that they
are totally ineffective at turning the tide of global warming trends. The author’s gorgeous, evocative prose feels
very prophetic. For a book written 20+
years ago, it seems very current, especially when everyone starts wearing a
mask during what appears to be a pandemic.
It also introduces themes that contemporary novels, such as Richard
Powers’s
The
Overstory and Michael Christie’s
Greenwood,
have addressed, decades after this novel was written. Ty is our flawed hero here who just doesn’t
seem to be able to rein in his destructive impulses. He constantly overestimates his own skill at
avoiding detection and underestimates the inevitable consequences of his being
caught.
