Published: 3, August 2021 (Hardcover)
Author: Ash Davidson
Genres: Small Town & Rural Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction, Family Life, Literary Fiction
I normally am not interested in books and movies about the environment because I know the reality of the situation in real life and it makes me uncomfortable reading about it. But I had to read this book because it was recommended to me by someone who reads a lot of books like me and I must say, I was not disappointed. A bit slow to start, not because it’s boring. It is slow because you are getting info about the logging and the industry involved in it plus the characters are being introduced to you and by the end, you’ll be invested in them. So don’t stop or get disappointed in the start, just read on and you’ll love this book.
It doesn’t feel like a debut novel because the author made sure that you are actually going to feel you are in that area near California’s rugged coast having a picnic and smelling the trees and grass. I am not a fan of that kind of detail but it feels good sometimes if it’s done properly like what Miss. Ash Davidson did.
This book is going to tell you the other side of the story of loggers because all the books that we read are always about the people who want to save the trees or tree huggers. So instead of tree huggers, we are reading from the viewpoint of tree loggers and how they lived and how hard it was becoming for them in the dwindling industry in the 1970s because this story takes us to that time and shows us what was happening to these loggers and what was the situation of the families they supported. The story of their wives and kids and neighbors.
It is kind of long because for the first twenty-plus percent of the story you don’t know what is actually going to happen but as soon as you realize what this story is all about, you get hooked and that first half is the only flaw it has; only if you are not into learning about the industry and what these people are doing. And that is why I am not able to give this book full points. I loved the book because it has a very powerful story with living breathing characters that I am sure you are going to miss when the book is finished. So don’t miss or skip the first part. I am only giving low points because of the people who want fast paced action from the first page.
This book is beautiful in a way that is going to make you realize we are our environment and a part of mother earth, what we do is coming back to us in the same way we treat her.
Synopsis:
“An epic, immersive debut, Damnation Spring is the deeply human story of a Pacific Northwest logging town wrenched in two by a mystery that threatens to derail its way of life.
For generations, Rich Gundersen’s family has chopped a livelihood out of the redwood forest along California’s rugged coast. Now Rich and his wife, Colleen, are raising their own young son near Damnation Grove, a swath of ancient redwoods on which Rich’s employer, Sanderson Timber Co., plans to make a killing. In 1977, with most of the forest cleared or protected, a grove like Damnation—and beyond it 24-7 Ridge—is a logger’s dream.
It’s dangerous work. Rich has already lived decades longer than his father, killed on the job. Rich wants better for his son, Chub, so when the opportunity arises to buy 24-7 Ridge—costing them all the savings they’ve squirreled away for their growing family—he grabs it, unbeknownst to Colleen. Because the reality is their family isn’t growing; Colleen has lost several pregnancies. And she isn’t alone. As a midwife, Colleen has seen it with her own eyes.
For decades, the herbicides the logging company uses were considered harmless. But Colleen is no longer so sure. What if these miscarriages aren’t isolated strokes of bad luck? As mudslides take out clear-cut hillsides and salmon vanish from creeks, her search for answers threatens to unravel not just Rich’s plans for the 24-7, but their marriage too, dividing a town that lives and dies on timber along the way.
Told from the perspectives of Rich, Colleen, and Chub, in prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, this intimate, compassionate portrait of a community clinging to a vanishing way of life amid the perils of environmental degradation makes Damnation Spring an essential novel for our time.”
Rating: 90/100
Recommended: 95/100 Yes.
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