Which of the characters do you most relate to and why? Which do you find hardest to understand?

Which of the characters do you most relate to and why? Which do you find hardest to understand?

Probably Mimi Ma. There she was just doing her corporate thing and then one day the pine trees that she relied on to help her escape from the daily work routine, was taken from her in a cruel and abrupt way. Only then did she wake up and take action. I'm sort of that way, it takes a personal action to wake me up sometimes. I didn't have a hard time understanding any of the characters. The author did such a good job developing them so that I could understand where each of them were coming from.

Nick, who used his art to try to understand the world and bring meaning to their activism.

I related most to Olivia. She had a vision and she stuck with it and led others to do the same. I related to Mia until the end I found her character development very strange. The Ray and Dorothy story I never understood and I thought that it didn’t add anything to the narrative

I really liked Patricia and admired her bravery.After her amazing discovery about tree relationships she was cruelly treated but lived on to be vindicated.

I loved Patricia and her story, however I wouldn't say I can relate to her because I think her brilliant scientific mind is very different from mine! I would say I am more of a Mimi, although, as stated by rebajane I did not like the way her character's storyline ended. I also agree that the Dorothy/Ray storyline was not really needed in this novel. I did not really get the whole Nellay character or his storyline either - maybe he represents technologie coming to the rescue, but I found the whole coding storyline hard to follow.

Like Ruthlea, I liked Patricia very much - I, too, am not at all scientific but her story and her persistence were inspiring. My favorite of all, however, is the first character I met, Nicholas Hoel. I wish that I could see - in real life - the book that was created from all the photos of the chestnut tree. This first story was poetic, I felt, and I could truly imagine the artful creation of the Hoel family. They made the tree into a living being, tall, strong, and to be revered, right from the first pages of this novel.