Greenwood by Michael Christie
'Time is not an arrow. Neither is it a road. It goes in no particular direction. It simply accumulates — in the body, in the world — like wood does. Layer upon layer. Light then dark. Each one dependent upon the last. Each year impossible without the one preceding it. Each triumph and each disaster written forever in its structure.'
This remarkable novel, structured like the rings of a tree, travels from a futuristic world in which barely any forests remain to the start of the twentieth century, where two young boys survive a train crash, setting them on a path that will change their lives. Moving from the future to the present to the past, and back again, this magnificent generational saga tells the story of one family and their enduring connection to the place that brought them together.
-Alexander MacLeod, author of Light Lifting
-Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal
-Kira Jane Buxton, author of Hollow Kingdom
Michael Christie is the author of the novel If I Fall, If I Die, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Kirkus Prize, was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice, and was on numerous best of 2015 lists. His linked collection of stories, The Beggar's Garden, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and won the Vancouver Book Award. His essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Globe and Mail. A former carpenter and homeless shelter worker, he divides his time between Victoria, British Columbia, and Galiano Island, where he lives with his wife and two sons in a timber frame house that he built himself.
