An excerpt from Richard Powers’s The Overstory and an exceptional piece of fiction. My heart is aflutter these past sunny days, swept up with the majesty of nature. I couldn’t help but be drawn into the quiet soul of Patricia, the story’s protagonist, with lines like these:

She works all day in the woods, her back crawling with chiggers, her scalp with ticks, her mouth filled with leaf duff, her eyes with pollen, cobwebs like scarves around her face, bracelets of poison ivy, her knees gouged by cinders, her nose lined with spores, the backs of her thighs bitten Braille by wasps, and her heart as happy as the day is generous.

I have been in a reading funk, unable to pick up and enjoy a book for more than the pulp it is printed on. Perhaps, piggy-backing on Nature’s profound beauty and my home sickness, this will be a story that will end my drought.