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Readers of Kimmerer’s 2013 best-selling book, Braiding Sweetgrass, will find the same themes and the same unique style in The Serviceberry. Both books mix Kimmerer’s Indigenous knowledge with scientific or, in the case of The Serviceberry, economic facts and personal experience to help the reader easily digest and emotionally resonate with complex topics. Chapter 6, for example, describes a serviceberry economy, likening biological and natural processes to economic concepts. Woven through Kimmerer’s discourse are conversations with Valerie Luzadis, Kimmerer’s economist colleague. Later in the chapter, Kimmerer is able to critique the capitalist system on both a large scale, in the person of ExxonMobil’s CEO Darren Woods, and on a small scale, by naming the thief of the free farm stand Darren, allowing the reader to have a more intimate understanding of the consequences of extractive capitalism and commodification.

Many of the same themes are present in both Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry. Kimmerer’s ethos, guided by her family’s Indigenous beliefs, is that of abundance, reciprocity, and gratitude, all of which feature heavily in each book. Both books also emphasize communal thriving. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Chapter 2 (“The Council of Pecans”) describes how pecan trees will only bear fruit together, never individually. The moral is that the individual can only flourish when all are flourishing. Chapter 3 of The Serviceberry examines how the modern market economy pits individuals against each other, while gift economies focus on the prosperity and wellbeing of the community as a whole. Thriving only happens when all are thriving.

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