Conservation scientist and author Lauren E. Oakes set out to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. From California, she traveled to the southeast coast of Alaska to discover that groves of yellow-cedar were on the decline. Looking for a doctoral thesis topic, the fast-disappearing yellow-cedar became the focus. What followed was an extraordinary years-long research project and the deeply heartening, In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a