The Overstory Lesson Plan

How does Powers wrap up his characters' stories?

Powers brings his characters’ stories to a close in a manner befitting the diversity of his cast: Olivia is gone but her memory endures; Nick never fully joins society again but makes art for an audience much larger than the traditional scope; Douglas also lingers outside the margins of society, is found out and turned in, then turns Adam in to save Mimi and Nick, and goes to jail with a lightened sentence; Adam becomes a notable psychology professor but is arrested and lives out the rest of his days in prison.

Mimi becomes a therapist in San Francisco with a new identity, and anguishes over Douglas’s sacrifice for her;...