Julie Prince is a top college student, destined for conventional success. But then she falls in love with Neil, a radical graduate student, and abandons her privileged East Coast life to tree-sit in the forests of Oregon. At first it is a romantic field trip; soon, though, Julie finds herself increasingly moved by the magnificence of the endangered forest and, like Neil, invested in its protection. Eventually pulled into a militant act of sabotage, Julie is forced to reassess her deepest held loyalties and beliefs.Incisively explores urgent questions about our abuse of nature. . . . Matson makes a vital connection between personal awakenings and the environmental and political realities with which we all must contend.This story of the all-encompassing blaze of first love and an uneasy eco-activism is surprising and honest.Quietly intense. . . . A timely, thoughtful, morally complex novel.A passionate and tensely pitched tale of first love and idealism set in the Oregon forests.