Their stay ends up lasting for more than a year, during which they watch as the forest around them is clear-cut. They are eventually joined by Adam Appich, who is doing a thesis on environmentalists. The night he is there, Nick and Olivia are finally forced out of the tree and arrested so Mimas can be cut down.

What happens at the end of the overstory?

By the end of the novel, all but one of the nine have become committed activists. Two end up in federal custody, one dies, one commits suicide, two go into hiding. But all of them earnestly embrace the same platform: Forests must be preserved, or nature will have its revenge.

What happens to Neelay?

Neelay grows up in the Silicon Valley and quickly becomes fascinated with computers and coding through his father, Babul, who works at an early computing company. As a child, Neelay falls from a tree and breaks his back, becoming paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.