There was nothing too noteworthy about this book for me, it hit the notes I expected it to, and although the pacing and characters were fine, it did nothing to excite me sadly

I loved parts of this novel which told the story of Finnish American immigrants in the logging industry of Washington state near the Oregon border. It describes working conditions and efforts to unionize. Readers also learn a great deal about salmon fishing. It describes immigrant acculturation. I expected to like the book more than I did, but it just seemed long and drawn out. The writing was good and the author's historical research exemplary. It just failed to draw me in

Deep River is the first book I read by this author. It was quite enjoyable.

Synopsis:
Karl Marlantes’s debut novel Matterhorn has been hailed as a modern classic of war literature. In his new novel, Deep River, Marlantes turns to another mode of storytelling—the family epic—to craft a stunningly expansive narrative of human suffering, courage, and reinvention.

In the early 1900s, as the oppression of Russia’s imperial rule takes its toll on Finland, the three Koski siblings—Ilmari, Matti, and the politicized young Aino—are forced to flee to the United States. Not far from the majestic Columbia River, the siblings settle among other Finns in a logging community in southern Washington, where the first harvesting of the colossal old-growth forests begets rapid development, and radical labor movements begin to catch fire. The brothers face the excitement and danger of pioneering this frontier wilderness—climbing and felling trees one hundred meters high—while Aino, foremost of the book many strong, independent women, devotes herself to organizing the industry’s first unions. As the Koski siblings strive to rebuild lives and families in an America in flux, they also try to hold fast to the traditions of a home they left behind.

Deep River by Karl Marlantes is one of those novels that is deeply personal to the author, something he shares with the reader in his author's notes at the end of the story. Unfortunately, because of the personal nature of the story, the storytelling suffers. It is not because the author is not capable, but rather an overly-enthusiastic attempt to include every single detail of the subject while paying homage to family history.

At its most basic level, Deep River is a fascinating story about Finnish immigrants who settle in Washington state and become players in the logging industry against the backdrop of the growing laborers' rights movement. There is a lot to love for those who enjoy family sagas of this kind. Family is the heart of the story. The Koski siblings continuously prove that blood is indeed thicker than water, as they weather changing fortunes, political and religious differences, as well as a growing divide between urban versus rural dwellers.

Plus, Mr. Marlantes brings turn-of-the-century logging back to life in all its brutality and insanity. Unfortunately, this is also where Deep River starts its descent because Mr. Marlantes spares no word or description when it comes to logging. Paragraph after paragraph, page after page, he details readers with every aspect of logging life. Granted, loggers were insane to do what they did and deserve their chance to shine. Sadly, the story suffers while they get their chance.

The other area in which Mr. Marlantes proves to be a bit too effusive with his descriptions is with the laborers' rights movement. While workers' rights are at the very heart of the Koski family story, his explanations of each side drag on and on. As in the case of the descriptions of logging, while he goes into ideological detail, the story comes to a halt.

In both of these instances, a good editing session could greatly improve the flow of the story while maintaining the detail Mr. Marlantes wants. These bits are interesting by themselves but detract from the overarching story so that it all becomes a bit of a slog to get through.

One true flaw with Deep River is with Aino Koski. While Mr. Marlantes does not portray any female in the best light, preferring instead to stick to various caricatures of women such as the ice queen or the submissive wife, I find Aino to be particularly troublesome. For one, she is utterly incapable of separating ideology from reality when it comes to her belief in communism but has no problems facing reality in every other situation. She is idealistic to a fault and too unrealistic, which is so odd given that Mr. Marlantes takes pains to portray her as supremely pragmatic and realistic. 

I particularly struggled with accepting that she turned her back on her child and that any mother would choose an ideology versus caring for her baby. I mean, she literally leaves her infant daughter behind to go help striking workers with only a few sentences describing her guilt at doing so. It isn't as if she doesn't love her child. In fact, the birth of her daughter and the feelings that having a child creates in Aino is the one rare scene in which Aino shows that she is capable of emotion. So, to have someone as stoic as Aino willingly give up that love and devotion and put strangers ahead of family in importance flies in the face of what we know about her character. It is almost as if Mr. Marlantes does not understand the mothering instinct at all.

With all that said, I finished Deep River with a greater appreciation for loggers and for those workers who risked everything to fight for shorter workdays, safer work environments, and better benefits. As workers continue to fight for the opportunity to unionize, there are lessons to learn from those early struggles. There is a part of me that continues to mourn the loss of the immense old-growth trees Mr. Marlantes loving describes, but you have to give props to the crazies who felled them with nothing more than wire cable, saws, and muscle. Insane.

I accidentally requested this book and then thought about reading it but am so behind in reading that I cannot tackle a book of this many pages at this point in time. I did start reading it this evening but don't believe it is a book I would enjoy and as I don't have time to read it now am giving it a pass. I am sorry.

Wow, what a story!!!! Whenever I dive into a book of over 700 pages, I have to make an investment of my time, have to be in the mood and it has to grab me at hello. I started reading this quite a while back and got thrown off when so many characters with confusing names were introduced in the beginning so I pushed it back to my to-do list. I kept looking at it in my library and I am so glad I picked it back up and got thru the beginning. There are few books that I have read that had me in tears at the end. The emotions this book pulls out is truly unbelievable. I became so invested in the Koski family. I will remember this read for years to come, and it will go in my top 5 of all time greats.
Aino’s epilogue narrative of what she missed and her life, was by far the best I have read in a book for years. This book is a work of art, beautifully written, a family saga showing love, loss, determination, grit, sacrifice and I can’t even mention how much I learned about the logging and fishing industries in the early 1900’s. I was googling several of the terms used in this book to understand what they were talking about, such as a springboard, Wobblies or a steam powered donkey.
I cannot give this book the review it deserves. DO NOT be daunted by the size, pick a week that you have some time, dive in and become a family member of the Finnish Koski’s. You will not regret it. I found myself waking up in the middle of the nite and reading a few pages, I literally could not wait to get back to it.
If you love historical fiction and a read that will stay with you, this is it. I was given the opportunity to read an ARC from Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for my honest unbiased review. This one comes in with the highest 5 stars I can give.

I really loved this book in a new to me author. The characters and location really and to the story. I can't wait to read the next one. This book keeps you guessing until the end.

I loved Matterhorn by this author, one of my top all time favorite books so when I saw that Karl Marlantes was coming out with another book I knew I had to read it right away. However, I didn't realize it was so long (!) so it took me forever to get the motivation to tackle it. A booktube challenge (Historathon) finally gave me the reason to jump in and while I didn't love it as much as Matterhorn it is still a really good read. I learned a lot about logging, politics, fishing and way of life in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s (and maybe not always all that excited about it) but most of all I became enamored of the characters as they lived their lives in this story. Marlantes has an ability to engage you with his characters whether you love them or dislike them...and yep, I really didn't like Aino, the main character, but she was still so well-developed that I felt my dislike was based on knowing her pretty well, lol. This book is long and maybe not always fully engaging because of all the many details surrounding the setting and the story but I truly felt a connection to the characters. They became very real to me and that is a mark of a really good story. Great writing as well!

This was an epic of a book. A long tome covering only one generation of the Koski family, through decades (1890's-1930's) and with some years closely detailed. It is a linear book, without jumping around in time, which I do enjoy in a book.

The detail in the book is quite remarkable. The writing is plain and straightforward and there lies the one major downfall of the book. The writing style was a bit flat and sometimes the descriptions were way off from what one may expect. Such as when our main character is an older woman, maybe in her 40s now, and still keeping up with the latest fashion and acting like a school girl, it seemed unlikely given how he never cared what people thought given her politics and personality. And it is with the women that was the weakest depiction, despite one being a main character and viewpoint.

Regardless of the faults I did enjoy this book, and give it a high rating. Perhaps others may be bothered more severely than I with its faults, and given the length of the book be more skeptical.

Deep River is a very moving account of immigration life and the sacrifice of leaving your home behind to make a new start in a new country. It’s a compelling story, well written and meticulously researched. A great work of historical fiction that taught me something new. While this book is long, it is an educational and entertaining story. I appreciated the mix of facts and humanity. I learned a great deal about the lives of the early pioneers in the logging industry and the search for safer work conditions. This great book about a part of history I knew little about. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in historical fiction. I would like to thank Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion of this book.
#DeepRiver #NetGalley

A very long but satisfying novel. Mr. Marlantes is is gifted story teller. Please go back and read his Vietnam combat novel. Stunning work.

This book had alot going for it, it just need to be trimmed by about 1/3. The story itself was intresting, I learned alot about Scandinavian immigrants to the Pacific Northwest, but the descriptions were just over done.

(Abandoned) I really enjoyed Matterhorn from Marlantes, so I was excited about getting to read his latest book. This is a family saga of sorts that follows three siblings growing up in Finland in the time of a Marxist Russian occupation. After their father is arrested in the midst of political unrest, they decide to pack up and head to America with hopes of starting new lives. This was a book that I was not able to finish. In fact, I made it less than halfway through. While our three protagonists were interesting characters, I didn't connect with any of them individually, only the relationship between the three of them. I found the plot to lacking in direction. The book is over 700 pages (Marlantes writes chunkers) and I just couldn't get into it. Perhaps I'll pick it up and find it easier to enjoy at another time, but for not, I need to set this one aside. *Advance copy provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Unfortunately I only had time to read about 150 pages before my download expired, but I think I'll seek this book out in an audio format to finish on the road.

At 820 pages, covering 76 years (1893 till 1969) and almost three generations, Deep River is a saga.....a saga of the Koski siblings, Ilmari, Matti and Aino, who one by one flee Russian occupied Finland, at the turn of the 20th century, and come to United States of America to settle down between Washington and Oregon, in the Finnish communities of the Columbia River basin where the main mode of employment is either working in horrendous conditions for the logging and fishing companies or farming your own land. This book is a story of their fortunes and misfortunes, beliefs, dreams, aspirations, hard work, success, failure, love, regrets....through their and many other characters' eyes and experiences we see that life in 'the land of the free' wasn't as golden, rosy and free as it was made out to be, especially for immigrants who had to fight every step of the way for their basic rights.

This book is huge and it did take a bit of time and patience to get through it but by the end of it, I felt it was worth it.

My thanks to NetGalley, Atlantic Monthly Press and the author Karl Marlantes for providing me with an e-Arc of the book.

Deep River is a well rounded, epic story that spans the course of many decades. The story follows the lives Matti, Imari and Aino Koski. The Finnish brothers and sister fled their native Finland after facing escalating persecution at the hands of the Russian’s. Aino is an outspoken socialist, and her mother sends her to follow her brothers to America after she is picked up and tortured by the Russians. Isolated away from all they know, the siblings must adapt to their new home and find a way to live and thrive. At the heart of it all is a large river nicknamed Deep River. The River acts as an anchor keeping the siblings grounded and sustained as they embark on their own individual journeys of attaining the American dream. The story is a rollercoaster of highs and lows as we follow the Koski’s through their lives. The novel is on the long side, but it is needed to give us the a rounded, developed story that this kind of novel requires. Definitely worth the time to read it.

This book is very dense-- it took me a looong time to read it. I wasn't fully invested in the characters, either. I think that this is for history buffs.

When I was a young teen, I remember spending hot summer days immersed in the huge historical novels of Michener and Uris. For hours, I would be caught up in their magnificent world-building, only emerging for meals and sleep.

I had the same experience with Deep River. At a weighty 700+ pages, there is much to enjoy. Marlantes takes us inside the logging and fishing industries of the Pacific Northwest, and the political radicalism at the turn of the century. Told as the story of a Finnish family who left the old country at the point of Russian guns, the book winds through their intertwined hard-scrabble lives.

This is easily a 4 star novel for me, and based on the reports of others, I need to go back and read Marlantes’ earlier “Matterhorn”.

Who knew that Finns have such a long and proud history of immigration to America?

Certainly not I: in fact, this whole book was an eye-opener. By turns passionate, informative and political, this book is definitely a stonking piece of fiction, and hats off to Karl Marlantes for tackling such a huge topic over the course of one single novel.

Deep River is the story of the Koski siblings: Ilmari, Aino and Matti, who emigrate from Finland to America one by one in order to escape political persecution and build a new life for themselves. They do that in the timber industry, and most of this book (which spans a huuuuuge four decades) charts the family’s attempts to find their way in a new and evolving country.

More than anything else, this book was a history lesson. I had no idea that Finland used to be occupied by Russia and also Sweden, that so many Finns left for America (hundreds of thousands of them, apparently) and that lots of them were so politicised. Along with Ilmari and Matti’s deep dive into the logging industry, the book also charts Aino’s passionate struggle to bring socialism and fairer working rights to America, and her attempt to set up some of the first trade unions in the country.

That was fascinating. However, there was no getting away from the fact that this book is lo-o-o-ng. Probably a tad too long, because I felt moments where my attention started to wander and I began to flick through pages at a slightly-faster rate than usual, just to say that I’d finally cleared the 50% mark. It’s no easy task, condensing so much history into one book, but I think it might have been better as a duology.

What else? I loved the characters: they felt real and made mistakes just like anybody else. Also, people died Game-of-Thrones style in this book; you really couldn’t tell who’d make it to the end and who wasn’t going to. As far as the main characters went, Aino was a little bit too Marmite for me- her reckless devotion to the cause meant that, among other things, she destroyed her marriage and abandoned her daughter for almost five years. Not great.

Despite that, I really found myself caring for the Koski family. It’s impossible not to root for them and for their struggles to make a life for themselves, and this book is a tribute to that struggle. All hail the epic!

Historical fiction with arelatively short timeline but unusual focus, namely Finnish immigrants in Washington State at the turn of the 20th Century. Author Karl Marlantes had the opportunity to dive deep into political waters of early Socialism in Europe, beginnings of union organization in the USA, the challenges for immigrants escaping feudalism and hoping for success in capitalism. One constant handicap in the book, for me as a novice to the culture and community, were the names. I had so much difficulty following characters at various points in this book. The sheer numbers of them just dwarfed my abilities to follow the plot. I acknowledge my limitations. I had hoped this book would follow multiple generations but it did not. I found that disappointing and yearned for it. I also felt the author juggled the point of view and then left readers hanging at the end by not offering good closure all around. So, while this is a mixed treat, it is unique and a juicy read. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.