The Overstory: Part 1: Roots—Adam Appich Summary & Analysis

In 1968, five-year-old Adam Appich paints a picture of the four trees planted behind his family’s house as his mother watches. The trees correspond to each of Adam’s parents’ four children: the eldest, Leigh, has an elm, Jean has an ash, Emmett has an ironwood, and Adam has a maple. Adam is reluctant to add his father to the picture, but he does so at his mother’s urging. Adam gives the picture to his mother, who is in the living room drinking with two neighbors. As he runs back upstairs, Adam hears her say that he is “a little socially retarded.” In the boys’ bedroom, Adam asks his brother Emmett what “retarded” means, and Emmett tells him that it means “not regular people.” Adam is okay with this; he feels that “there’s something wrong with regular people.”

Months later, Adam’s father tells the children that they need to find a tree for their new sibling who will be born soon. They look through a book of trees and each come up with different ideas. Adam starts crying, worried that they might pick the wrong one. He notes how each sibling is like their corresponding tree, and Emmett starts arguing. Their father Leonard ends the discussion by picking a tree that’s on sale: black walnut. The narrator comments that this tree will indeed be appropriate for the unborn Charles.

The baby is not yet born when the walnut tree arrives. Leonard tries to wrestle the tree into its hole in the yard, but Adam sees its roots wrapped in burlap and worries that the tree will suffocate. He panics and throws himself into the hole just as Leonard tosses the tree in. The weight of the tree lands on Adam’s leg, and he screams. Leonard drags him away, cursing, as Adam cries—in pain, but mostly worrying about his brother’s tree.

Four years later, the Appich siblings argue over whose tree is the most beautiful. Nine-year-old Adam decides to hold a vote. It comes down to Emmett’s ironwood versus Adam’s maple. Jean supports Adam, as she always does, but Emmett still wins. By age 10, Adam is a loner. He doesn’t understand other children, who often play cruel pranks on him—especially his brother Emmett. Instead, Adam focuses on reading about natural history and collecting specimens. He fills the house with his findings. One day, Adam comes home to find his “museum” destroyed. His mother explains that it was all junk, and Adam slaps her in his anger. When Leonard hears about this, he twists Adam’s wrist until it breaks.

One day that spring, Adam climbs up his maple tree and doesn’t come down for hours. He looks out over the neighborhood and enjoys observing everything both below and in the tree. The narrator notes that Adam will remember this vigil years later when he is atop a massive redwood tree, looking down on people who mostly want him dead.

When he is 13, Adam notices that his sister Leigh’s elm tree is withering. It soon dies of the Dutch elm disease, which has killed countless trees throughout the country. Leigh seems unbothered by this, joking with her father Leonard that he’s always “had it out” for her, but Adam mourns the loss. He makes Leigh a clumsy present out of a piece of the elm’s wood, but she leaves it behind in her donation box when she goes off to college.

That fall, Adam becomes fascinated with ants. He sits in the grass for hours, watching them and noting their complex behavior. He borrows some nail polish from Jean, paints certain ants different colors, and starts to watch and take notes. Despite Emmett’s cruel teasing, Adam keeps at his project, designing experiments to test the intelligence and group willpower of the ants. He realizes that they have their own kind of intelligence, one wholly different from humanity’s but similar in its cunning.

At the end of the year, Adam enters a science fair and presents his observations of the ant colony. The judges are clearly impressed, but they assume that an adult has done Adam’s work for him. He denies this and even starts crying, but they refuse to give him a medal. Adam knows that they can’t believe that any child would work so hard “for no reason at all except the pleasure of looking until you see something.”

A few months later, Leigh disappears in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after getting into a car with a man she met the same day. Her parents break down, and Adam’s mother blames his father. Leonard breaks her elbow in response. After this, Adam accepts that “humankind is deeply ill. The species won’t last long. […] Soon the world will be returned to the healthy intelligences, the collective ones.” The remaining siblings hold a secret funeral for Leigh, as Leonard still won’t accept that she’s dead.

After the science fair, Adam gives up on taking notes and observation. In high school, he delves into a world of role-playing games with his friends, fearing and avoiding girls while also trying to study them like his ants. In class, he learns to do the bare minimum and still pass. As his mother slowly becomes addicted to codeine, Adam starts his own business doing assignments for other students. It starts as a joke but quickly grows lucrative. He experiments with his cheating system and stores away his extra cash.

In the fall of his senior year, Adam picks up a book for another student’s assignment that he’s writing. The book is called The Ape Inside Us by Rubin M. Rabinowski. Adam starts to read it and becomes enthralled. The book both explains and seemingly proves that humans are extremely predictable, hopelessly bound by bias and groupthink. They will fail most logic problems but excel at recognizing who their group has decided is in and who is out, who should be praised and who should be punished. Obsessively reading the book, Adam feels better than he has since Leigh died.

Despite all his work for other students, Adam’s own grades are poor, and he knows that no college will accept him. Instead, he writes to Rubin Rabinowski, who is a psychology professor at Fortuna College in California. In his letter, Adam praises Rabinowski’s book and says that it opened his eyes to human nature and changed his life. Later, Adam receives a letter back; Rabinowski tells him that Fortuna College will strongly consider his application. Clipped to the letter is a handwritten card saying, “Don’t ever blow smoke up my ass again.”