One of those reading experiences when we don't want to book to end and when we are wrapped up so emotionally in the a story that it seems like reality. This is the experience of reading Ash Davidson's debut novel Damnation Spring. Set in the Northwest, the novel evokes familiar names and places. The characters live and breathe. A modern novel, a gift!

4.5 stars! What a beautiful story about the enduring power of love, set in the late 1970s in the logging industry in the Northwest. It's also the story of a small community, and how far people will go to protect those they love. The prose is lovely, the characters are layered and you care about them.

"Colleen and Rich Gundersen are raising their young son, Chub, on the rugged California coast. It’s 1977, and life in this Pacific Northwest logging town isn’t what it used to be. For generations, the community has lived and breathed timber; now that way of life is threatened.

Colleen is an amateur midwife. Rich is a tree-topper. It’s a dangerous job that requires him to scale trees hundreds of feet tall—a job that both his father and grandfather died doing. Colleen and Rich want a better life for their son—and they take steps to assure their future. Rich secretly spends their savings on a swath of ancient Redwoods. Colleen, desperate to have a second baby, challenges the logging company’s use of herbicides that she believes are responsible for the many miscarriages in the community—including her own. Colleen and Rich find themselves on opposite sides of a budding conflict that threatens the very thing they are trying to protect: their family.

Told in prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, Damnation Spring is an intimate, compassionate portrait of a family whose bonds are tested and a community clinging to a vanishing way of life. An extraordinary story of the transcendent, enduring power of love—between husband and wife, mother and child, and longtime neighbors. An essential novel for our times."

Thanks to NetGalley for the free copy (after publication).

Damnation Spring was such a powerful read! I could not believe what people went through to protect their families and keep their jobs at the same time. Author Ash Davidson makes you really feel like you know these characters and what they're going through. The setting is told in such a way that you can see these majestic trees! A timely and important read. Highly recommend!

I enjoyed reading Damnation Spring, but, for me, it was not a completely satisfying book.. I loved learning what is involved in logging big trees. and I gained an appreciation for how physically demanding this work is, and how much technical knowledge the loggers have. I was drawn into the environmental impact of clearing the land and the harm and conflict it created in the community. However, I did not care for the characters. I felt that they were mostly one dimensional and I really did not form any connection to any of them. The big decision made by Rich at the beginning of the book propelled the story, but it was unrealistic to me.. The ending was too abrupt, also.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the opportunity to read and review the wonderful debut novel by Ash Davidson - 5 stars!

In 1977, Rich and Colleen are raising their son, Chub, in Redwood country of Northern California. Rich is a logger, a tree-topper, scaling the huge trees to fall them for lumber. It’s in his blood - his father and grandfather died doing the work. But environmentalists are threatening their livelihood, with land being bought by the park. Then there is the chemical spray being done by the lumber company to get rid of the brush slowing down their jobs. Colleen has suffered multiple miscarriages and is beginning to think it’s caused by the tainted water. Being on opposite sides of the issue causes huge problems.

This is a beautifully written story - hard to believe it’s a debut. The author makes you look at both sides of the issue and at the heart, the families just trying to make a living. In this day of climate issues affecting everyone, it is a book to make you think about consequences of decisions. It’s also a book about love, family and community. It is a definite must read!

An atmospheric, beautifully written domestic drama set in 1970s Pacific Northwest logging community. Dramatic and heart wrenching; though slow paced and redundant at times. Overall it is a solid story and offers alot of information and descriptions of the PNW and logging. Lovers of historical fiction and family drama will appreciate this novel.

Damnation Spring is a fascinating and beautiful book with powerful prose. A slow start, but a moving portrayal of the Gunderson family.

There’s a dark atmosphere surrounding this story set in the past and focused on the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest. It centers around the story of Colleen and Rich. Colleen is a midwife who adores her young son Chub and longs for another baby. Unfortunately, she’s had many miscarriages and Rich is worried the next one might take Colleen from him. Rich comes from a generations of logging workers, specifically tree-toppers and it killed both his father and grandfather. Like many parents, they want a bright future for their son. Rich believes investing in the logging industry is the way to go, but he’s sure that Colleen won’t see it that way. The story is beautifully written, atmospheric and engrossing. It’s a cautionary tale of industrial impact on the environment as well.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. Unfortunately, I did not realize this was archived October 1. I will pay attention in the future. Thank you.

This is not a book most people will find easy to like. It's slow to start, people seem to be completely oblivious to certain things, and chapters can seem repetitious at best. However, sticking to it should find readers of literary or eco-literary fiction enjoying it.

It's the late 1970s in the US, and Rich Gundersen, along with his much younger than he wife Colleen and their young son live in a very small town where the economy is almost all logging.

Rich has worked for the Sanderson company forever as a topper (the person who gets to climb to the very tops of trees to cut off branches and/or the actual head of the tree in order to install lines to pull felled trees up the mountain). He has also lasted longer than both his grandfather and father did in this punishing, physical work for the same company. His best friend is Lark, an eccentric old man who worked with Rich's father - in fact, whose topping of a branch killed Rich's father when it landed on him fro a couple hundred feet in the air - and who looks out for Rich as he can.

When it's Rich's POV, we get a lot of logger jargon, as one would expect from a logger. We also get to know Rich's dream, which had been his father dream before him: cutting the 24-7, which is not a convenience sore but a redwood that is 24 feet, seven inches in diameter. Without telling Colleen, Rich takes all of their savings, gets a loan, and buys over 700 acres of land that includes the 24-7. It abuts land that Sanderson owns, and Rich thinks that when Sanderson cuts in an access road, Rich will be able to use that as he feels the redwoods on his property, and become wealthy in the process.

Colleen has suffered a miscarriage one of many, the exact number of which she has not told Rich. When it's her POV, we get a snapshot of her typical day: worrying about Rich. Dealing with her sister Enid and her passel of kids. Colleen's an amateur midwife, so cannot be blind to the strange things happening in other womens' pregnancies: stillborns, miscarriages, massive deformities, like half a brain, or no brain, in one case. Many people in the community, including Colleen herself, suffer from random nosebleeds.

Rich and his brother in law shoot a deer who appears to be pregnant, only to find a basketball-sized tumor inside it. Someone loses a calf after it's born with deformities. Another person's bees are all killed by the spray.

The company sprays herbicides in the area, to keep pesky weeds at bay where trees are being harvested. It smells slightly of chlorine and when it's in the water, either directly or via runoff, it's described as having an oily sheen. (I think this last may refer to including diesel fuel in the mix, to help weight down the spray.)

Issue number one for me: there's no hint in this small town that anyone picks up on these things being connected. They may not have gone to college, for the most part, but not all of them are idiots.

The book moves back and forth primarily between Rich (now worried about the anti-logging hippies will close down the patch he and his crew are working for Sanderson as well as broaching the quarter million dollar bet he's made on their future) and Colleen (who seems to be condemned to be condemned to forever driving her sister Enid and her brat pack of kids around and making pancakes or eggs), but we also get chapters from their young son's POV here and there, making observations the adults never would.

Into this small town, one major industry setting, walks Daniel, Colleen's high school boyfriend. He now collects water samples from around the area for testing purposes, as not only are the salmon dying, so are other things (like human and bovine babies, born or not, like bees) and it appears that people are also suffering from things (like nosebleeds and respiratory illnesses). other environmental impacts are also present (mudslides from cleared areas, runoff of soil and herbicides into the drinking water).

Once he enters the picture, the book fully transforms into eco-lit. Daniel knows Colleen and her family drinker from the spring that runs near their house, and he wants her to take samples so he can send them off to be tested. She declines, because of course she does: she's a logger's wife,and testing the water may reveal things she doesn't want to see. Eventually, she gives in and starts collecting in secret.

Daniel tells her everything is contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin - AKA dioxin. He's also been sounding the warning bell around town, and trying to talk to people, only to find doors slammed in his face and his tires slashed, among other things. There's a scene in the book where the (only) gas station attendant in town refuses to sell him gas.

One couple speaks up about the contaminants in their water and food. They're quickly ostracized by the rest of the town. Another couple speaks up. They too, get the cold shoulder. There's even a house belonging to one of the couples that is burned down. Colleen eventually appears at one of the meetings Daniel is hosting. A reporter happens to catch her saying something, and after it's reported, she and Rich start to get that same cold shoulder. Rich is angry with her; he'd told her to stay out of it. After all, this is their livelihood in danger, and his larger dream as well. Rich gives a passionate speech about how loggers are environmentalists at a town meeting, to which people applaud, but they are still cold toward Rich and Colleen as they leave.

I've lived in small towns, and can say the book captures that often claustrophobic feeling of living in the same place, doing the same jobs for generation upon generation. The snubbing and shunning of neighbors is also presented quite well.

We then go speeding toward the end. Rich finds out he didn't check the fine print on his purchase. But there are a couple of things that bothered me about the end.

One is the deux a machina in relation to one of the larger items in the book. The other is the actual end, which I didn't like at all. I didn't think, after 400 pages of Rich shown to be a careful, conscientious man, that he would do what he did.

The book could have used a bit of tightening, especially with the repetitive nature of Colleen having to chauffeur Enid and her kids around.

Overall, I found the book to be exceptionally written from a narrative standpoint. We expect to see Rich do all the logging things, and he does. We expect Colleen to be the stay at home mom and look after her child and sister, and she does. There are a number of passages that are a joy to read. The book does give us a good look at an entire town living around and in an environmental nightmare.

4.5 stars out of 5, rounded down to 4 for the issues noted.

Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for the reading copy.

I'm pretty sure "Damnation Spring" by Ash Davidson will be one of the best books I read this year. It is beautifully written, especially for a debut novel. It's a long book, but well worth the time investment! Ms. Davidson's descriptive writing made the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest come alive to me. I now feel like I have been there, even though I've never been west of the Mississippi. The characters came alive to me as well, and they absolutely broke my heart at times. Though, at heart, this book is about the negative environmental impact that commercial logging has on both the wildlife and the people in the area, Ms. Davidson was also very sensitive to the fact that many families depend on logging for their livelihoods. There are no heroes or villains; it's not judgmental or preachy. This is a book that will stay with me for quite awhile. Five stars for character development, scene-setting, and amazing research.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the privilege of reading an advanced digital copy of this phenomenal book in exchange for my honest review.

Damnation Spring vividly brings to life a community in crisis, and a family in crisis, set in 1977 and the lumbering community of the Pacific Northwest. It is dangerous work, a hard life, living on the edge of poverty. But, the lumbermen are proud and independent.

Environmental activists are seeking to stop the logging of the old growth Redwoods. The removal of the trees and destruction of the understory has caused devastation–mudslides and ruined fishing streams that are the source of food for the indigenous peoples.

There is also a high incidence of birth defects and miscarriages among the worker’s wives, and worrisome nose bleeds.

When a native son returns as part of a scientific study to identify toxins in the water left by the lumber company’s use of Agent Orange types of herbicides, his presence sets off resentment, retaliation, and violence.

The novel tells the story through the Gunderson family. Rich is descended from generations of loggers. He is upright and hard working, and married to Colleen. They have one living child, Chub, and have endured eight miscarriages. Colleen is a volunteer midwife and has seen first hand babies born without brains, the miscarriages, the heartbreak. When her high school sweetheart Daniel returns to study the environmental impact of the herbicide the lumbering company uses to kill the undergrowth, old feelings are stirred up. And, Daniel stirs up the loggers against him, for he is seen as just one more person out to destroy their way of life.

I had some trouble getting into the story mostly because it was hard for me to identify with the loyal employees of the lumber company that was destroying the Redwood forest. The author’s portrayal of the characters did keep me reading, and there came a point where the story of a community’s struggle to survive caught me. I was caught by the pattern of birth defects. Rich takes a giant leap of faith, mortgaging his entire future. And he and Colleen must openly discuss the pain of her eight miscarriages.

The story became a page turner. Then, I felt it became melodramatic, with unexpected strokes of good fortune followed by one crisis after another.

I appreciate the insight into the lives of the loggers. I liked the conflict based on the changes caused by environmental awareness. I did feel the novel could have been tightened, and definitely I felt there was the ending could have been more focused.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Damnation Spring.

From the premise, I thought this was going to be sort of like an Erin Brockovich kind of tale but sadly it didn't hold my interest. I almost DNFd it several times.

First, though the story is told mostly through two POVs, there are a lot of characters; not a handful but a lot; minor and supporting characters that walk in and out of the narrative and disappear completely.

Second, there's a lot of logging mumbo jumbo with little to no context. The author doesn't explain terms so as a reader I'm left wondering a lot. I just ended up skipping all this stuff.

Then, the story dragged on endlessly due to the endless descriptions of the landscape; look, I'm all for world building and setting the scene but there is such a thing as too much description, and there was plenty of filler dialogue between characters you weren't familiar with and lacked introductions.

I didn't identify or sympathize with anyone, which made it hard for me to connect with the story and stick with it.

I had high hopes for this book since the premise did sound intriguing but not much happened and the ending was disappointing with many unresolved issues left hanging.

This book took me ages to get into, but I’m so happy that I did! I think it was the 70’s and logging lingo that threw me, but I eventually caught on and had a clue by the end! My favorite author is Stephen King and he once said that a book is like a pump. You have to prime it to get anything out of it. I am very happy that I stick through the “priming” of this book, since it ended up being great! It evoked a full spectrum of emotions and the characters were written so realistically that I felt like I knew them from when I was a kid. It showed the full amount of human nuance and I ended up loving the story for it! The author explains and describes well without being overly wordy and it helped to make this story rounded and fully-fleshed. It was a great yet heartbreaking story, I’m sure that I’ll read it again! Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my free arc in exchange for my honest opinion. It was great!

I tried to become interested in this story line, as a doula I generally like to read about the fictional or non fictional lives of midwives, but as just wasn’t able to stay connected to this book.
The author seems to enjoy writing very whimsical, very descriptive scenes, where as a reader I knew more about the setting than I did about the plot. I found myself very lost during most of the book, and got frustrated and needed the book without finishing it. I’m sure the author is a wonderful writer, just not the style I enjoy the most.

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for my review.

This is a story that highlights how what we do to our environment impacts us and how we impact it. The views of the characters, Rich, Colleen, and Chub, open our perspective on how fragile it all is. However, some portions were a bit too technical for me. Still, their experiences were heart wrenching.

This book was excellent and made a lot of great points and exposed a lot of interesting information, but it made me incredibly anxious and I don't think it's a book for everyone. So I will start with trigger warnings.

Trigger Warnings: pesticides, miscarriage

This book is about the use of pesticides in a logging community and how it effects the health of people in the community. It's sad and upsetting, but pesticide use, GMOs, etc. are a big part of our society and we need to be aware of these things.

History is written by the victors. In the United States the State and National Park systems enjoy such unrivaled popularity that it’s easy to forget not very long ago, this was far from a forgone conclusion. In many areas the interests of conservationist “tree huggers” ran into direct and sometimes violent clashes with local business interests. Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson is a beautifully written novel that tells the story of one of these flash points, in the redwood forest on the coast of Northern California.

Damnation Spring is a story about the vanquished in the battle over control of the redwoods. Davidson brings to vivid life a struggling community in 1977 that subsists off the logging of local old growth redwood, some of the last remaining forest that has not been purchased or annexed by the National Park or the State Park, but the park is looking to expand. This looming economic battle is one struggle throughout the book, but it is exacerbated by an unfolding environmental health crisis brought on by the spraying of chemical defoliants by the logging company, county, and parks service to keep the roads passable. One would think that the benefit of hindsight would lessen the tension in reading this story, but if anything it only heightened it as I came to deeply care about the characters.

This is a beautiful and immersive story that I would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys reading historical fiction, family dramas, environmental history, about the development of the National Parks, or just a great book.

Thanks to @netgalley and @simonandschuster for an e-arc of Damnation Spring

4.5 stars

This book actually took me by surprise. I was not expecting to enjoy this and be so involved with this story.

This story is based in the time period of 1977 in a Pacific Northwest logging town. Many of the main characters work for a timber company working in the Redwood Forrest. This book does go into some detail around how the timber companies worked but also includes how the work they did impact the everyday lives of the area residents. It sort of reminded me of coal mining companies and coal towns of the past here in West Virginia.
I enjoyed the environmental side of the story that includes how the stripping of the trees and then chemicals used impacted the characters’ everyday lives.

So why only 4.5 stars. Well, a little spoiler, make sure you have your tissues by the end of the book. After some ugly crying, I was not a fan of the ending.

Thanks #netgalley #scribner and #ashdavidson for this ebook. I will be suggesting everyone to read this book.

Book Review⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Damnation Spring
Ash Davidson
Small Town & Rural Fiction
464 Pages

Short Synopsis

Damnation Spring tells the story of a town that lives off of lumbering. Generations have worked in this business throughout the years.

The logging area is sprayed often to kill the overgrowth. Women are experiencing miscarriages & birth deformities. Their families depend on the lumbering companies for work, to support their families. Could the spray have anything to do with these women’s issues? If so, will the lumber company do anything about it? Will people turn on each other?

My Thoughts

I freaking loved this book!
Damnation Spring is a slow roll to amazing. It moves at a steady pace & is a realistic story.

It is about family relationships, including all their faults. Big money and the power it holds. Hard workers who risk their lives every day. Love and loss. In general, it is about life.

Though this book is about daily life & isn’t full of excitement, I found myself drawn to the characters. Damnation Spring is full of emotion.

The story flowed smoothly & steadily. I almost felt like I was a part of this community. A community full of ups & downs. The ending wasn't what I expected, at all!

This is one of my favorite books of this year. Genuine, realistic, & heartfelt, Damnation Spring has dug itself straight into my heart. ❤️

Thank you to @NetGalley, @ashdavidson, & @scribner for gifting me an ebook to read & review.