Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx cries “Timber!” loud and clear in “Barkskins,” her towering new novel of forests and families in North America. With gorgeous imagery, clean prose and remarkable sensitivity, she recounts the wholesale destruction of the rich, wild woodlands of the world while illustrating the constructs of civilization and the paradoxes of human nature that have brought us to the brink of environmental collapse. And –– once one overcomes the essential irony of a narrative deploring deforestation being printed on more than 700 pages of wood pulp paper –– the result is as powerful and important as any literary work produced on this continent in the three centuries spanned by the story.

In a nutshell, “Barkskins” is “The Giving Tree” for grown-ups; a much larger, much more complex version of Shel Silverstein’s children’s classic. Both works depict a state of harmony between man and nature destroyed by the insatiable desire for material wealth and end with a terrifying image. (In the case of “The Giving Tree,” that creepy jacket photo of the author.)

In Ms. Proulx’s extended version, indentured woodcutters Rene Sel and Charles Duquet arrive in heavily forested New France (eastern Canada) at the end of the 17th century to clear the land and plant the seeds of their family trees in virgin soil. Europe having already been denuded to meet the agricultural needs of its population, the newcomers encounter an environment unlike any they have ever seen: evergreens “taller than cathedrals” and “leaf-choked canopies” in which “even the sunlight was green”; birds pouring from the sky “like froth-crested waves”; and so many fish in the rivers that they seem “made of hard muscle.”

This is the home of the Mi’kmaw people, “so tightly knitted into the natural world that their language could only reflect the union and neither could be separated from the other.” But to the French, both the Mi’kmaw and the “evil” wilderness are savage things to be conquered, and the arrival of the settlers precipitates a shift from sustainability to eventual ecocide.

While Duquet runs away to seek his fortune and establish the dynasty of which he dreams, Sel remains behind and is pressed into marriage with a native medicine woman. Through successive generations, Sels and Duquets increase and overlap, forming the yin and yang of preservation and exploitation, healing and destruction, that is the central theme of the book.

As if to compensate for the absence of equilibrium in the ecosystem, Ms. Proulx takes great care to balance the elements of her novel. She gives equal treatment to capitalists and conservationists, and assiduously avoids cliches. Not all destroyers are male, nor healers female. Indeed, the savviest tycoon is Lavinia Duke Breitsprecher, who, despite being neither male nor an actual blood relation, is the true spiritual successor to her rapacious great-great-grandfather, Duquet.

The duality that exists within the individual characters holds true for the forests, as well. Even as we marvel at their beauty and variety, we feel the terror of the dark, strange and seemingly infinite woods. We lament the waste while observing the benefits of the fallen trees, including ships that enable global exploration; dikes that hold back the seas; construction of homes, bridges and beautiful furniture; and the manufacture of paper, ink, newspapers and books, as well as the roaring firelight by which to enjoy them.

But one has only to consider the mounting evidence of climate change to recognize that the bill for our collective excesses has finally come due. Mercifully, the author inserts glimpses of hope and even humor into a story that is tragic in its inevitability, and makes it possible for readers to relish a work that forecasts their doom.

I would have been happy to keep reading for another 700 pages, but just as the novel hits its stride around the Industrial Revolution, the action accelerates dramatically, skipping generations and speeding through scenes with characters of whom we know little beyond their ancestry.

It’s tempting to speculate that this abrupt change came about at the insistence of an impatient editor or because of the author’s advancing age (80), but it’s far more likely that Ms. Proulx intended the adjustment in tempo to serve as a forest metaphor. After all, it isn’t necessary to chop all the way through the trunk of an enormous tree to bring it down; just enough well-placed strokes will cause it to fall of its own accord. And so it is with “Barkskins.” The end is swift and terrible –– a dire warning to us all.

Sandra Levis is the associate editor of Shady Ave magazine and former literary editor of Pittsburgh Quarterly.

First Published: June 14, 2016, 4:00 a.m.