08/31/2026
“The Golden Spruce” by John Vaillant invites readers into the rain-soaked world of Haida Gwaii, a remote collection of islands off the coast of British Columbia where, on an icy night in January 1997, Grant Hadwin took a chainsaw to a 300-year-old Sitka spruce, sacred to the Haida Indigenous tribe and famous for a unique mutation that resulted in golden needles instead of green. Hadwin left the tree fatally weakened, and two days later it fell. Why would Hadwin, a logger and an anti-logging activist, turn against the most magnificent tree on the islands? Was he insane?
Vaillant uses his formidable journalistic talents to uncover the intertwined stories of Hadwin, the spruce, the tribe, the logging industry, and the land. He pieces together Hadwin’s motivations and follows his trajectory as he hurtles toward the golden spruce and then into the unknown (he vanished days before his trial for cutting down the tree was to begin). Vaillant sets his tale in the greater context of Haida Gwaii and its fierce seafaring Indigenous people and examines the logger’s conundrum: the best loggers love the forest, even as they are in the process of cutting it down.
Brought to you by Susan Munroe
Link in bio to purchase from Hearthside Books and Toys (https://hearthsidebooks.com/book/9780393328646)
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