Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of drug abuse and addiction.

“While Jake is free to mention the Earth’s rampant dust storms in the abstract, it’s Cathedral policy never to speak of their cause: the Great Withering—the wave of fungal blights and insect infestations that rolled over the world’s forests ten years ago, decimating hectare after hectare. The Pilgrims have come to relax and forget about the Withering, and it’s her job (and jobs, she’s aware, are currently in short supply) to ensure they do.”

This passage fulfills two crucial narrative functions for the speculative section of the novel. First, it delivers exposition on the novel’s worldbuilding by defining the Great Withering and its effects. Second, it discusses the failure to acknowledge the cause of the Withering as a social reaction to this event. This deepens the level of speculation by revealing the complex tensions that prevent the world from addressing its issues.

“Though she understands this journal is something that ought to have great bearing on her life, unfortunately for Silas and his scheme, Jake has always mistrusted the expression ‘knowing your roots.’ As though roots by their very definition are knowable. Any dendrologist can tell you that the roots of a mature Douglas fir forest spread for miles. That they’re dark and intertwining, tangled and twisted, and impossible to map. That they often fuse together, and even communicate, secretly sharing nutrients and chemical weapons among themselves. So the truth is that there exists no clear distinction between one tree and another. And their roots are anything but knowable.”

In this passage, Christie uses the idiom “know your roots” as an extended metaphor for Jake’s rejection of her family heritage. Because Jake’s affinity to the environment is so strong, she rejects her identity as a Greenwood on the basis of science. This rejection characterizes her as someone who relies on greater objective truths to deny her responsibility to acknowledge personal ones.

“Though she talks constantly of Liam’s bright future and worries aloud about whether there’ll be any unspoiled woodland left for him to enjoy as an adult, he counts weeks between the times that she actually focuses her green eyes on his face or listens to what he says. For this reason, every Halloween (a holiday she actually observes, dragging him to the same party at the Earth Now! Collective house in Vancouver each year) Liam has dressed up as a tree—a Douglas fir, in fact, her favourite species, wrapping himself in grey cardboard bark and branches, adorning himself with pinecones carved from her wine corks and with construction-paper needles that he’s painstakingly cut out himself. He wears the costume in the hopes that his mother will finally see him. It’s never worked.

And so that year, Liam decides to start dressing up as a lumberjack.”

This passage not only cements the tension between Liam and Willow Greenwood but also exposes Liam’s motivations for rebelling against his mother. As a young nomad, Liam can’t help but feel that Willow values her commitment to saving the environment over his upbringing. His lumberjack costume is symbolic of his direct opposition to her priorities, suggesting that he only rebels against her because he wants her to love him more than the