Community Members to Discuss ‘The Overstory’ During Third Annual Palisades Reads

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

Palisades Reads will host its third annual book club event on Wednesday, September 22, beginning at 7 p.m. via Zoom.

Friends of the Palisades Library teamed up in 2021 with local environmental nonprofit Resilient Palisades to present Palisades Reads—a communitywide book club designed to “foster connections, spark conversations and celebrate reading.”

This year’s selection is New York Times Bestseller “The Overstory,” written by Richard Powers—an over 500-page work of fiction.

“‘The Overstory,’ winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world,” according to the author’s website. “From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’ 12th novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

“There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.”

The community conversation will be introduced by part-time Palisadian Zibby Owens, author and award-winning host of the podcast, “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books.”

The discussion will also feature local urban forestry activists from the Pacific Palisades Community Council Palisades Forestry Committee (Committee Chair Cindy Kirven) and TreePeople (CEO Cindy Montanez), who will “share their perspectives and recommend actions to take.”

Local author Laura Diamond, who is involved with Friends of the Palisades Library, shared with the Palisadian-Post when the book selection was revealed earlier this summer that partnering with Resilient Palisades for this year’s event was “kismet.”

“The Palisades Reads committee had been discussing ‘The Overstory’ as a possible selection, when a couple of us received the Resilient Palisades newsletter announcing a book club to discuss ‘The Overstory,’” she explained. “I love how proactive the organizers of Resilient Palisades are with everything they do, and we were happy to see if we could collaborate.”

She shared that central to Palisades Reads’ mission is cultivating community through books, so having a local partnership makes the club even more meaningful.

To sign up to participate, visit resilientpalisades.org/events/the-overstory.