A slow burn, but nicely written. My only concern is that I feel like I needed to know more about the tree topper career field before jumping in. A lot of the tree lingo was used as if it was common knowledge.

Beautiful prose 5”hat trulybtranspirted me from my chair to rainy redwood forests. So much humanity and reality in this book! A wonderfully heart wrenching, unputdownable ride!

Thank you Scribner and Netgalley for providing an ARC on exchange for an honest review.

The thing about this novel is that it has its merits so it’s nearly impossible for me to write it off completely - but the truth is that I didn’t love it. There were too many pages when I was bored, waiting for something to happen. I love slow, comtemplative storytelling but there was so much minute detail and description that it actually detracted rather than enhanced the reading experience.

Overall, a good premise and story, but slogged down by too many words and pages.

This is a beautifully written book. The details, the scenery, the people. However, it was such a slow slow slow read. It's very "tree" heavy which makes sense but isn't exactly a topic I am eager to learn a ton about so this book was a bit difficult to read at times.

This is a heart rending story of a couple and their son. They live in Damnation Alley a very rural area where logging is how most everyone makes a living. Rich has worked for the logging company his whole life. Colleen is mostly happy mother and wife. Their son , Chub is ready to go to school.
Colleen has had multiple pregnancy failures and she just really wants to have a child. Rich does not want her to get hurt trying....so they are growing apart...Sadly, Rich has made a decision that affects them both, except he has not told her yet. You can see the struggles this and other changes in their lives can be tumultuous.
Very well told, Heart wrenching, sad, fun, melancholy, and cheering in some ways. A great, clean read

I only made it about halfway through this book before I gave up. The very descriptive nature of the book got in the way of the character development. While I found the descriptive prose beautiful, I could not feel any kind of connection to the characters.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book. I read the synopsis, took a peek at a few reviews, and started reading. With a title like Damnation Spring, I imagined there would be some loss and sorrow, but by the end I was still so heartbroken.
The story is told with a focus on Rich, Colleen, and Graham, their child. The loss that these three experience throughout the book is tragic.
Damnation Spring was a hard one for me to get through. The ignorance throughout irritated me; I had to keep reminding myself of the time period this was set in. It was well written, and I think that's what kept me reading.
Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read this book in exchange for a free and unbiased review.

On paper (ha), this book is my perfect read: environmental issues, complex characters, with a nice slow burn. The story follows Rich and Colleen and various other characters in their logging community come to terms with their livelihood threatening the health of the town. I've read many books that touch on environmentalism but never from the side of industry. I commend the author on how she was able to give some heart to the other side of all the environmental wins.

I thought the characters were believable and well drawn out. I really hated some of them--but that was the point. I knew this wouldn't be a light read going in but I don't think the ending hit me as hard as it was meant to. It felt rushed and unearned. Overall, I would recommend this book to those who like character driven stories.

I really wanted to like this book, I truly did. It's very slow and very descriptive. I will try it again at a later time, but I was in a bit of a reading slump and needed something fast to keep me reading. The writing is beautiful, and I know many people raved about this book!

A wonderful, thought provoking novel about the logging industry, sprays full with poisonous pesticides, generations of attachments to the land, family, marriage, motherhood heartbreaks, and greed. Well written and filled with wonderful characters and depiction of conflicts and bravery. I really liked this book. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
I would definitely be recommending this book to readers on my Instagram bookstagram account.

Damnation Spring, I wanted so badly to like this novel but something was off for me. I enjoyed the characters and where the story ultimately headed, it was just a bit too wordy for me. I felt like we could have gotten to the point quicker. That being said, it was still an enjoyable story especially if the over-wordiness does not bother you!

Thank you to NetGalley, Scribner, and author Ash Davidson for this ARC!

This was an absolutely amazing story. It was atmospheric, beautiful, and heartbreaking. I thought this story would be very triggering for me but it was so well executed and I really loved it. This one will stick with me.

This book broke my heart 💔

It was a slower-paced character-driven novel about family, work, and what doing the right thing can mean, even when it's hard.

There was so much "tree stuff" in this. If details frustrate you, maybe stay away. I was able to skim over a lot that just didn't matter to the story. However, I did find the actual work of tree felling fascinating and found myself going down a rabbit hole researching it myself while reading the book.

Overall I enjoyed this book as it was what I was personally craving - BUT It won't be for everyone. However, If you're looking for a slower-paced novel that will shatter your heart, this one is for you.

This book was a log- heavy and way too much- I suppose fitting with the topic matter. Colleen and Rich are your main characters of this book focused on the conflict between loggers and environmentalist. I felt like this book truly did not have any flow. We went from a long couple hundered pages of information with very little story weeded in to make you want to keep reading. There are so many times where I wanted to put this book down. However, the last two hundred pages really picked up and I wanted to know so much of what happened. If the book had been 100 pages less, and more about the story I would have enjoyed it way more.

Set in the 1970s, the story centers around a logging town in Northern California and it’s majestic redwoods. Long haired hippies are protesting the destruction of the redwoods and the use of chemicals. Rich Gundersen is a well respected logger in the community. He and his much younger wife Colleen have one son. Colleen has had eight miscarriages and a stillborn daughter with no medical explanation. Colleen is not the only woman in town to have devastating birth results. Several other women have had children that have severe birth defects resulting in the babies deaths. The logging company is less than ethical in its practices. There is a heavy use of toxic chemicals that have properties the same as Agent Orange. Environmental regulations have yet to be implemented because the damage to humans and the environment were not fully known or understood. The families earning their livelihood want to preserve their jobs and want their lives to remain as it has always been.
This is a deep look into the families in the community and the impact of the changes that are coming to their town. Thought provoking read.

I have such conflicting feelings about DAMNATION SPRING! I was so excited to read it as I had heard nothing but wonderful things about the book, and it's right up my alley: a sprawling 1970s set family drama set in a rural town in California. It just moved soooo slowllyyyy, and the story doesn't really pick up until the middle of the 450 page book. A lot of Davidson's writing is centered around logging, and I just didn't connect with that. It's so much description of the practice without any real reason, so I found myself skimming a lot of this book. The characters are fantastic though. We follow a small family, Rich (the logger), Colleen (the midwife and mother), and Chub (their 5 year old son) as they come to terms with "tree-huggers," infidelity, miscarriages, and the very real possibility that the town is being poisoned.

Not to sound sarcastic, but I truly think I would have enjoyed this book much more if I had come into it knowing a lot about logging and the Redwoods! The author can be both over description, but I also felt lost a lot of the time and didn't understand what exactly was important to the story. Perhaps there were metaphors I missed if I had known more about how a logging town operates? The book shines when plot points come to light, and I could see this as a fantastic indie film, but it certainly was too long and way too many loose ends were left to make me feel satisfied when putting the book down. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but it just wasn't the book I was hoping for.

TW: miscarriage, violence, dog death

I really did enjoy this book at the end of the day, but it took me forever to get through.

The Bad: this was very descriptive, and very technical - I felt like I had to keep taking breaks to look things up (especially when it came to the logging industry). It was also a very slow pace, and it took me around 200 pages before I felt captivated by the story. It almost felt like the author was trying too hard to be 'literary' instead of telling the story in a compelling way.

The Good: I loved that this touched on environmental issues because, hello, it's an extremely real problem that the world is facing. Because everything was so descriptive, the story was very vivid and felt real. The writing was objectively beautiful and the characters were incredible.

I'm very glad I pushed through and finished this, though it wasn't the fast paced read I expected.

The type of book to read when you want details, heartache, and a very specific setting. Davidson takes the time to describe logging, pregnancy, landscape and show the characters' lives. The storytelling reminded me of the book, "Everything I Never Told You," by Celeste Ng. The characters have so many interior thoughts that aren't articulated to each other and we see how that takes a toll on relationships.

First, read this:
<blockquote>"Ask any of these guys. You won’t find a guy that loves the woods more than a logger. You scratch a logger, you better believe you’ll find an ‘enviro-mentalist’ underneath. But the difference between us and these people is we live here. We hunt. We fish. We camp out. They’ll go back where they came from, but we’ll wake up right here tomorrow. This is home. Timber puts food on our tables, clothes on our kids’ backs. You know, a redwood tree is a hard thing to kill. You cut it down, it sends up a shoot. Even fire doesn’t kill it. Those big pumpkins up in the grove, they’re old. Ready to keel over and rot. You might as well set a pile of money on fire and make us watch."
–and–
“The real timber’s gone,” Lark said. “What’s left, ten percent, including the parks? Two thousand years to grow a forest, a hundred years to fall it. No plague like man.”</blockquote>

There isn't a lot to argue with in this novel. The positions are made clear as glass, the townsfolk of the story are innocent of any wrongdoing except not wanting change and the corporate interests are extracting value from the land, the timber, and the people with no slightest regard for the costs.

This ain't rocket science. You know whose side you're on from the jump.

What price innocence...the townies aren't idiots, it's clear that their corporate masters pay them pittances to do dangerous jobs. They love those jobs, they love the life it affords them. So why the hell should they bitch if someone else lives fancier than they do? Ain't like they'd want to live like those folks do, even if they had all the money those folks have. So keep the trees fallin' and the pennies rollin' in.

The personal costs? Well, omelets ain't ever come out of whole eggs, have they. That's the way life is. Except...when you step in front of a woman who wants kids, you'd better be *well*armored*indeed*. Colleen wants babies. She's miscarried eight times! Her sister's had healthy ones, and with a man you'd have to be kind to describe as "grossly unfit." It clearly ain't her body....

And here's my problem: The pace of the novel is, to put it politely, magisterial. The language is limpidly clear, if a bit less than inspiringly lyrical. But the gender politics are awful. The conflict between husband and wife over her screaming NEED to mother a brood, her apostasy to community values (and with a man she has a history with! that gets what feels to me like a pretty insignificant amount of play) because her uterus hasn't popped out healthy babies, squicked me out. I hate it when women in stories play the Mother Card and get away with amazingly nasty shit (see my outraged shout about Gone Girl), unlike Colleen. But basically I don't care about Motherhood. It isn't necessary for you to reproduce yourselves, straight people, the planet's already working itself into a fever to get rid of us. So using it, as Author Davidson does here, as a reason for Colleen to do something that (objectively) is good but will end the way of life these people want to live, shouldn't be framed as "she did it for her babies to be born."

Listen, I don't think what mega-corporations do to the world is laudable, and they do it for the vilest, most selfish reasons. I'm right there with you on the "make it stop" front. But don't play "Sacred Motherhood" on your cards or you'll lose any serious argument for them to be held accountable. NOT being a mother is the responsible choice for all women. The only people who are carryin' on about having more babies are the white supremacists, and we need a lot fewer of them stat.

On balance, three stars was what I could muster, and I felt pretty questionable about that last half-star. The book's set in 1977. We already knew the cost of overpopulation then. The "Zero Population Growth" movement was organized in 1968. It's still a damned good idea. But Sacred Motherhood is used as a primary motivator to positive action in this story, and that sits wrong with me.

The ending wasn't particularly satisfying, after all we've been through; but there not being anything dramatically wrong with the structure or the writing (apart from there being too much of it) I couldn't bring myself to downgrade it. But it wasn't an easy decision. Three...that is, on Amazon's debased scale, a bad rating. I think it's a perfectly fine rating, a perfectly fine read got a perfectly fine rating, and I didn't beat it up beyond its just deserts. That will have to do.