The Golden Spruce

The award-winning international bestseller and a timely, even prescient, portrait of man's troubled relationship with a vanishing world.

On a bleak winter night in 1997, a British Columbia timber scout named Grant Hadwin committed an act of shocking violence—he destroyed the legendary Golden Spruce of the Queen Charlotte Islands. With its rich colours, towering height, and luminous needles, the tree was a scientific marvel, beloved by the local Haida people who believed it sacred.

The Golden Spruce tells the story of the sadness which pushed Hadwin to such a desperate act of destruction—a bizarre environmental protest which acts as a metaphor for the challenge the world faces today. But it also raises the question of what then happened to Hadwin, who disappeared under suspicious circumstances and remains missing to this day.

Part thrilling mystery, part haunting depiction of the ancient beauty of the coastal wilderness, and part dramatic chronicle of the historical collision of Europeans and the native Haida, The Golden Spruce is a timely portrait of man's troubled relationship with a vanishing world.

A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed.

'His story is about one man and one tree, but it is much more than that. John Vaillant has written a work that will change how many people think about nature.' SEBASTIAN JUNGER

'Rich, painterly prose... Vaillant is absolutely spellbinding... His descriptions of the Queen Charlotte Islands, with their misty, murky light and hushed, cathedral-like forests, are haunting, and he does full justice to the noble, towering trees.' NEW YORK TIMES