Tree Story begins with the mystery of whether Messiah, a legendary violin attributed to Stradivari, was indeed created by the master or was a skilled craftsman's knockoff. The answer was found in the age of the tree that yielded the instrument.
Valerie Trouet, associate professor at the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, adopts an engaging style sure to capture the attention of any nature lover, then pulls readers deeper into the world of dendrochronology. With humor, she describes science gone astray (her equipment was stolen when she was in Tanzania to collect tree rings) and how science mixes poorly with money and politics (the science of dendrochronology was born at the University of Arizona due to a rift between a wealthy Mars-obsessed patron and the scientist A.E. Douglass, who tried to set him straight).
Trouet barely mentions that she's often the only woman on her fieldwork trips. Like Hope Jahren's Lab Girl, Tree Story exudes a passion for science and the planet. Trouet argues persuasively that trees can teach people about the correlation between drought and the fall of empires (from Rome to Genghis Khan), about global warming and, eerily in light of Covid-19, about pandemics.
If Tree Story occasionally delves more deeply into scientific specifics than readers may want to go, Trouet soon returns to the present, often with a clever turn of phrase. She will leave all readers thinking about what humans can do to appreciate the planet more and treat it better. --Jennifer M. Brown, senior editor, Shelf Awareness