A review by deedireads
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard

informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Finding the Mother Tree wasn’t quite what I’d expected, but it was interesting and taught me something new and I’m glad I read it. I also recommend the audiobook!

For you if: You like nonfiction about nature AND memoirs.

FULL REVIEW:

“Plants are attuned to one another's strengths and weaknesses, elegantly giving and taking to attain exquisite balance. There is grace in complexity, in actions cohering, in sum totals.”


After buddy reading Braiding Sweetgrass and loving it, two friends and I decided to choose another nature nonfiction to read together and landed on Finding the Mother Tree. It’s written by the woman who discovered just how connected and intelligent trees truly are.

I liked it for sure, although I didn’t quite *love* it. But that’s more of a “me thing” than a book thing. First of all, nothing can live up to Braiding Sweetgrass. Shoulda known that. But also, I didn’t read the synopsis carefully enough. I had expected it to be about the connections between trees, but this is about the story of how she discovered those connections. It’s much more like a memoir. And so I kept feeling like the book hadn’t started yet. About halfway through, though, I realized that my expectations were off and fell into the rhythm, and from then on I enjoyed the reading experience a lot more.

Simard’s family have been foresters for generations, but when she was young and working for a forestry company, she noticed that their attempts to comply with reforestation initiatives wasn’t really working. This propelled her down a career of scientific study and discovery that angered policymakers and had her butting heads with men who wanted nothing more than to dismiss her, but led to our modern understanding of the incredible reciprocity and communication that occurs between trees.

If you have any kind of science background, I think you’d really like this one, because she goes into detail about all her experiences and really takes us along on the journey. If you’re not a science person (like me), I recommend the audiobook. It was well narrated and definitely helped me stay engaged through the parts that otherwise might have lost me.

All in all, even though I struggled a bit, this book definitely taught me things and I’m glad I read it.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings