Maxwell Thomas

Birnam Wood is on the move. A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike in New Zealand. This disaster has created a unique opportunity for a guerrilla gardening group that calls itself Birnam Wood (yes, it was the Macbeth reference that made me look at this title). Mira, one of Birnam Wood’s founders, is scouting out the Korowai Pass and a farm located there as a potential location to garden. Mira isn’t the only interested party, and promptly runs into Robert Lemoine, an American billionaire who is in the process of purchasing the farm as a location for his “end of the world” bunker. The two strike an unlikely partnership with Lemoine promising full funding to bring Birnam Wood into the world of legitimate non-profits upon proving what Birnam Wood is capable of on the farm. Catton’s voice is reminiscent of Stephen Markley’s in The Deluge, both utilizing a meandering voice that covers ecologic disaster, government policy, and the lengths that guerrilla (at times anarchistic) groups will go to protect the world and their belief systems.