In the tradition of Krakauer's Into the Wild, The Golden Spruce tells an astonishing true story of a furious man's obsessive mission against an industrial juggernaut, the struggle of the Haida people to save their world, and the mysterious golden tree that binds them all together.
When a kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited Alaskan island just north of the Canadian border, they re-ignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest that made international news. On a winter night in 1997, a logger-turned-activist named Grant Hadwin plunged into the frigid waters of the Yakoun River in the Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw behind him. When he was done, a unique spruce tree -- 50 meters tall and covered with luminous golden needles -- was teetering on its massive stump.
The tree, which baffled scientists, was sacred to the Haida on whose land it had stood for over 300 years. It was also beloved by local loggers who singled it out for protection in the midst of vast clear cuts. Since the 1970s, the mist-shrouded archipelago -- one of the continent's most pristine and vibrant ecosystems -- has been a battleground with government officials and logging companies squaring off against the Haida and environmental groups. The loss of the mythic golden spruce united loggers, natives and environmentalists in sorrow and outrage. But while heroic efforts were made to revive the tree, Grant Hadwin, the tree's confessed killer, disappeared under suspicious circumstances.
John Vaillant's article on the death of the golden spruce was published in 2002 in "The New Yorker, and this book has grown out of it, dramatizing the destruction of a deeply conflicted man and the wilderness he loved; in so doing, it traces the rise, fall and rebirth of the Haida nation, and exposes the logging industry -- the most dangerous land-based job in North America -- from a point of view never explored in contemporary non-fiction.
Review Quotes:
"John Vaillant has written a work that will change how many people think about nature."--Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm
"Worthy of comparison to Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. . . . A story of the heartbreakingly complex relationship between man and nature."-- Entertainment Weekly
"Absolutely spellbinding."--William Grimes, New York Times
"A haunting tale of a good man driven mad by environmental devastation.... [Grant Hadwin's] appalling tree surgery is as vividly wrought as one of Patrick O'Brian's shipboard amputations."--Frank Clifford, Los Angeles Times
"This tragic tale goes right to the heart of the conflicts among loggers, native rights activists, and environmentalists, and induces us to more deeply consider the consequences of our habits of destruction."--Donna Seaman, Booklist
"Vaillant interlaces a well-reported murder mystery with elegantly spun cultural and native history, conjuring the spooky mood of the Northwest forests with the clarity of David Guterson or Jonathan Raban."--Bruce Barcott, Outside
