num_pages: 272
description: A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves most: the only giant golden spruce on earth. As vividly as Jon Krakauer put readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest, where trees grow to eighteen feet in diameter, sunlight never touches the ground, and the chainsaws are always at work.When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.The tree, a fascinating puzzle to scientists, was sacred to the Haida, a fierce seafaring tribe based in the Queen Charlottes. Vaillant recounts the bloody history of the Haida and the early fur trade, and provides harrowing details of the logging industry, whose omnivorous violence would claim both Hadwin and the golden spruce.
language: English
title: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
titlecomplete: The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
genres: Biography, Nature, Book Club, Canada, Environment, Science, Nonfiction, Natural History, History, True Crime
ratings_count: 9759
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Governor General's Literary Awards / Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général
category: Nonfiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Kiriyama Prize
category: Nonfiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company