The best novels that explore our connections with the natural environment

I particularly love books that combine the trifecta of engaging story; interesting, complex characters; and good writing with real substance (as in, I stop to think about the content). Greenwood has all of these.

The writing is particularly lyrical—I could fill this space with beautiful quotes. The author takes the reader through four generations of a family, with each generation intimately connected to trees in different ways—from lumbermen to environmental activist to woodcraftsman to botanist.

And as the author “takes a core” through a family tree, the story captures both the characters’ relationships to one another as well as to the world in which they live. I cannot recommend this book enough!

I am in awe of Charlotte McConaghy’s skill—both at crafting beautiful prose and using the length of her novel to unfold the story of its main character (I have now seen her do this twice).

In a world in which many animals are extinct, Franny is on an obsessive mission to follow the migration of the last Arctic terns. It takes the course of the novel to understand Franny’s motivation, given to the reader in pieces and thereby made somewhat of a puzzle. Franny is a complex character, and coming to understand her and why she identifies with the terns offered me a sense of gratification.

McConaghy’s ability to connect her character’s personal peril to another species’ ecological peril rings authentic.

The size of Barkskins made me pause, but I had read other books by Annie Proulx that I liked, and the description appealed to me.

Admittedly, I learn a lot of my history through historical fiction, and I learned a lot from this story of two families through three hundred years. Over the course of the novel, the arc of many generations—and therefore characters—arises and subsides, but the consistent theme throughout is the European utilitarian perspective on the forest and how this perspective undermined and marginalized the Indigenous way of life.

The scope of the book and its style create a somewhat dispassionate narrative, which may be off-putting to some, but still many images and pieces of the history remain with me years after reading it.

First of all, this sprawling novel is funny and entertaining, and those qualities would be reason enough that I would recommend it. Yet beyond those qualities, it created a strong sense of place and a real social and political conflict without ever becoming preachy or heavy handed—not an easy feat as I have learned.

The storyline, a conflict over land use and water rights, is repeated again and again throughout the West and Southwest in particular—in this case pitting real estate developers against impoverished locals. But the story is also about a conflict of cultures and how those cultures perceive and connect to the land. Exposing such conflicts is a boon of literature.

I could not put together a list such as this without including a work by Kingsolver, whom I so associate with writing that embraces the natural environment.

When I first shared my own writing, readers would ask me if I knew her work. I have a somewhat sparse style; Kingsolver, on the other hand, uses rich detail of natural phenomenon to great effect, making her novel lush. She also makes accessible simple to complex biological concepts.

In this novel, by juxtaposing biology and lush detail with the stories of the three main characters, she draws parallels between the “natural world” and humans that remind us that we are animals too—all the while having us invested in very human characters. Her work encourages me to be a little less sparse.