Arboreality

A series of interconnected, multi-generational stories that balance disaster and resilience in a future British Columbia. As the climate changes, so does the world of the characters, as they struggle to save what they love of the old world (not always successfully) and build a new one (not always easily). It can sometimes seem as if we’re swamped with disaster stories, especially about our worsening climate and our stubborn refusal to do anything about it, but this one left me both thoughtful and hopeful (a little).
Winner of the Ursula K Leguin Prize for Fiction 2023, which is a good… show more.

In this profound and devastating novella, Campbell gives us a complex, multi-generational window on a post-warming, post-collapse world rebuilding itself. A cathedral grown, not built, out of living trees. A masterwork violin made from dying old-growth Sitka spruce that will long outlast the hand of its creator. A decaying library salvaged, its wealth of knowledge distributed to the living hands that need it most. Through these touchstones of human resilience and ingenuity, we're shown a path forward into a new world that doesn't escape loss or ignore it, but is burgeoned up by it into new vitality.