Overstory-- Zero: Real Life in the Timber Country of Oregon [Hardcover]

Robert Leo Heilman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1995

This is a collection of personal essays by an author who knows what it means to be a logger, tree planter, mill worker and roofer in the "marginal population" of the Umpqua Valley in Oregon. In honest, gritty prose, Heilman writes about the complex relationships between work, nature, family and community at a time when community itself is as endangered as any job or tree.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"It's best not to look at the clear cut," Robert Leo Heilman writes, describing his grueling work as a tree planter in the timber country of Oregon. "You stay busy with whatever is in front of you because, like all industrial processes, there is beauty in the details and ugliness in the larger view. Oil film on a rain puddle has an iridescent sheen that is lovely in a way that the junkyard it's part of is not." Heilman's fine collection of essays, which gives the reader an inside look at the society of loggers, environmentalists, and people who never stop laboring while trying to survive, beautifully illuminates the details of the working life. Alternately joyous and heartrending, evocative of Thoreau and Whitman, these essays by a man who has lived the life he writes about, deserve to be read by a wide audience. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In timber industry parlance, overstory: zero means "clear-cut," or removal of all the trees in a stand of timber. Heilman lives in Douglas County, Oregon, the self-styled "Timber Capital of the Nation," a sparsely populated, economically depressed area. For five winters, he worked with a company reforestation crew, planting seedling trees at the rate of 700 a day. A high school dropout, Heilman had more than 30 occupations?logger, sawmill worker, roofer, house painter?before an on-the-job accident left him unable to do hard physical labor. He writes engagingly and with sensitivity about the life of a laborer, about the struggle of a backwater community to survive. Heilman looks at the blue-collar worker's and the middle-class professional's perceptions and prejudices regarding each other. This is a vivid portrait of a "marginal population" and an area in transition.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 221 pages
• Publisher: Sasquatch Books (November 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570610371
• ISBN-13: 978-1570610370
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,265,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Fulghum is to Kindergarten, R.L.H. is to Douglas County, October 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Overstory: Zero : Real Life in Timber Country (Paperback)

As a Douglas County transplant and an English teacher, I relished both Heilman's depictions of life and livelihoods as well as recognized his elevation of the spirit and humanity of this portion of the globe.

One may compare the witty short-takes of Robert Fulghum's "Kindergarten" series and Norman McClean's "River" collection to that of Heilman's "Over-stories".

This collection of writings is refreshingly simple backwoods as well as elevated highbrow. It is both for and about life, as one man has experienced it, told in such a way as to be universal in its appeal and understanding.

I use these stories in my classes to bring the world my students live in within the walls of academia. If nothing else, then to show them that it is possible to enjoy and recognize the beauty of something even when you feel you are surrounded by nothing at all.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine celebration of place and community, January 5, 2008

By 

R. Michael Godfrey - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Overstory-- Zero: Real Life in the Timber Country of Oregon (Hardcover)

I picked this collection up while returning to my home in another Oregon river valley, after two years away on a contract. reading it first brought home to me the preciousness of place, the the wisdom of this writer. I recommend it.