Many glowing adjectives can be used to describe a novel by Richard Powers: brilliant, moving, mesmerizing. But one word succinctly captures the feeling I come away with every time I put a novel of his down: awe. Of course, given that I look forward to a new Powers novel just as eagerly as my daughter waited for the next in the Harry Potters series, I will be the first one to admit I come to the table already biased. But Powers meets my ridiculously high expectations every single time. He does it again with The Overstory, a sprawling, messy, breathtaking and yes...awe-inspiring tome about trees.

If you're wondering how on earth an author can write a 500-page literary fiction volume about trees, consider this: Margaret Atwood is a huge fan. "It is not possible for Powers to write an uninteresting book," she once said. To its credit Overstory is more than merely not uninteresting: ...