Barkskins by Annie Proulx (2016)

Whew! I don't know the last time I read one of these multigenerational novels spanning over 300 years. There was one like this about the French and Americans in Viet Nam that I read many years ago, and James Michener was known for these sagas, but I don't think I ever read one.

This was the saga of two families, but even more the saga of the deforestation of North America. I was driving through the beautiful tree covered hills of the southern tier of New York State while listening to the final part of this book. Those forests look healthy from my car, but I realize I have seen very few old growth trees - maybe the redwoods in Muir Woods National Monument north of San Francisco. And of course, we don't live in sync with the forest any longer as the Native Americans or First People's did.

The book starts with two French orphan boys who are indentured to work for a nasty guy in Nova Scotia cutting trees in 1695. The deforestation starts with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, along the St. Lawrence, Maine. Other loggers are working their way through New York and Pennsylvania. This story takes us to the white pines of Michigan - that seem endless at the beginning - and then out to the NW U.S., and even the ancient kauri trees of New Zealand.

We get alternate stories of Rene Sel and Charles Duke (Duque).

I learned so many interesting historical facts about Boston, Detroit and Chicago, besides the lives of Native Americans and the tree story. This was such a huge tome, that I will just pull out a few things that stood out:

• Travel by ship was done by many of the characters - I think only one character went down in a shipwreck - and that was on Lake Erie.
• Fascinating was the trip to China in the 1700's - it took months and then they would have to wait months for the right winds to come around for their return trip. China would no let them wander freely, but they had to live in a special compound for foreigners. China had already destroyed their forests, but the rich had special gardens with trees.
• Life in logging camps was hard and dangerous.
• How Chicago became such an important center.
• Native Americans living off the forest vs. whites feeling that the forest needs to be tamed, chopped down and land used for agriculture - they considered the Indians lazy for "just" hunting and gathering.
• The Europeans kept destroying land by destroying forests and then trying to grow crops on insufficient land - all the way West. They even used the Bible as an excuse for this - something about man over nature.
• I do not have a clear sense of how the Forest Service evolved, though they get mentioned and what they have done to stop deforestation, restore things to their natural ways and how far we have gotten.

I am sure I had more to say, but I left off here and it will have to be enough. Great book!