Publisher: Scribner / Simon & Schuster Audio
Published: August 3, 2021
Source: Print – ARC Paperback via Publisher / Audio – ALC via Publisher
Summary:
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.
My thoughts:
As soon as I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. It was an anticipated read for this month and it totally delivered. And the fact that it’s a debut novel completely floors me – this is definitely an author to keep an eye on.
I’ll be honest – I probably went into this book for different reasons than most people, but I loved it all the same and that’s what counts, right? When I saw that this book tackled unexplained miscarriages – I was hooked. I had a few myself and while I am years from my last one, I just knew I wanted to read this book because I would be able to relate in some way to Colleen and I was right. I loved her doggedness in needing to know why she kept having these miscarriages and why the other women were having babies with deformities. She knew there was something wrong and she wasn’t going to let it go until she found an answer, even if that meant going up against her husband.
I was immediately pulled into this story right from the start. The writing is so lush and vivid and at times has a lyrical quality to it. The characters are all so flawed and relatable that you quickly become invested in their lives. Colleen was by far my favorite character in this book, though Rich and Chub are not far behind. They were all so richly developed and I loved how the story alternated from all their perspectives. It really allows us as the reader to see how they were affected by all that was going on.
This is such an emotional, complex story about a family living in a logging area and having to confront issues that pull at their very core. How do you fight for what you know is right when it goes against your means of living? The old-school loggers certainly don’t want to be told that the way they’ve been doing things is wrong, especially as their livelihood depends on it. Yet, the science tells them differently. And the women in the town, though reluctant as they may be to face it, have evidence that something is not right. The author really does a fantastic job of presenting both sides of the issue without being overly preachy, I thought.
This is not a fast-moving story by any means, but rather a detailed, character-driven saga that really tugs at those heartstrings, and one that definitely had me in tears a few times. This book is definitely going to be one that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon and I encourage everyone to pick this one up!
Audio thoughts:
I started off alternating between the print and audio so that I never had to stop reading this book. The audio was narrated by a cast of narrators and I just loved it, so much so that I ended up just listening to the whole thing! The narrators – CJ Wilson, Rebecca Lowman, Mark Sanderlin, and Candace Thaxton – did such a great job bringing this book to life, infusing just the right amount of emotion and tension into their voices as needed.
