4.5 stars, rounded up
This book tugged at my heart almost from the beginning. Rich is a logger, a tree topper. It’s a dangerous job and both his father and grandfather died doing it. It’s 1977 and the industry is changing. There are fewer trees, workers are getting laid off. Folks are just starting to realize the impact of harvesting trees on the environment and there are protestors. It’s a hardscrabble life and Rich decides to gamble on buying one of the last stands of “big pumpkins” around, despite barely having the money for the down payment. Oh, and he neglects to tell his wife about his purchase.
His wife, Colleen, recently suffered a miscarriage and is still in mourning. She’s a midwife, although she lacks the formal education and state licenses. When her college beau reappears testing the local streams, she realizes the company’s use of herbicides is the reason for the number of miscarriages and birth anomalies in the area. It’s a true family saga in all its glory. Because Rich and Colleen still love each other. But they’re no longer truly communicating. And there are other family issues that muddy the waters as well.
As folks in the area start taking sides, things get ugly. It’s a glimpse on a small scale of what things can get like on the big scale when people only see black and white.
This book begs to be a book club selection. There’s a lot of meat here. It highlights just how hard it is to step away from a way of life that goes back generations, even as you can see the harm it’s doing.
That said, the book could have been tighter. It’s the opposite of fast paced and at times, it did feel like a slog, especially in the beginning. I still recommend it because of the wonderful characters and the themes explored.
My thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for an advance copy of this book.

Somewhere in the midst of all these descriptive words and unnecessary chapters is a story. There is way too much logging jargon with no explanation of what it means. There are characters that are not properly introduced so it gets very confusing and wishy washy.

Rich, Colleen and Chub are the main characters, though many characters are introduced, sort of, throughout the story. It’s hard to keep up with who is a relative, who is a worker and who is a friend. Rich is a logger and has been cutting down redwood trees his whole life. Colleen, his wife, has suffered multiple miscarriages and has had one live birth, Chub. She begins to suspect the chemicals in the sprays have caused her miscarriages, along with congenital deformities in other babies and animals. So, in a nutshell, their livelihood and the only job Rich has ever known are in jeopardy because of the dangerous chemicals being sprayed in the forest.

In essence, this is a story about family, love, loss and the dangerous job of logging. I’m rating it 2/5 stars as it was just too wordy and I don’t feel it ended well. It kept me hanging and wishing for some closure.

Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson

This a magnificent novel. The most appropriate term is “gritty realism”. If you love descriptive writing, this is your book. If you hate detail and adapting to jargon, give it a pass. (That would really be an unfortunate choice, though.)

The novel is set in 1977-1978 in northern California, in and around Klamath. Rich Gunderson is 51 and a fourth-generation logger. His wife Colleen is a 34-year-old who serves as a midwife, though without formal training. Their son Chub is an energetic 8-year-old. From them we learn about the friends, relatives, and trash who have similar long-time connections to the community.

The whole area depends on logging, and it is a company town. Everyone knows that without logging, there would be few opportunities. But environmentalists are beginning to sound alarms. [The EPA was found at the end of 1970. The Redwood National Park nearly doubled in size in the spring of 1978. The Department of Agriculture halted the use of 2,4,5-T on food crops in 1970. The Yurok tribe was fighting for the Klamath River fishing rights granted by the Supreme Court in 1973.] Even Rich’s homestead has been taken by the government, though they can continue to live there until he and his wife die.

Damnation Spring deals with how these changes impact a family and a community not prepared for the end of their long-standing way of life. It is especially, though, a story of the power of love, with Colleen at the center.

Shrewd Debut of Climate Fiction

Environmental Damage – no disputes about the injuries it causes, at least, for many of us.

Ash Davidson tackled a big subject. She not only extoled about environmental injuries but she molded a strong storyline about loggers, their wives, their families and the anti-logging aggressive groups. The focus is on Rich Gundersen, a physically tall and good-looking man, married to Colleen. They have one son they call Chub. Colleen is desperate for more children; she has had many miscarriages and serves as a midwife.

There are many developments connected in this smart plot. Davidson makes sure the reader knows the story from many angles. Rich, who is in his early 50’s, does not want to die young like his father and many other loggers. He. He invested in a large expanse of land with older redwoods which could provide monetary security for himself, wife and son– something no one has achieved in his family.

There are secondary characters who are important. There is Daniel, a researcher and college boyfriend of Colleen, who uncovers possible chemicals sprayed by the timber company. Are these responsible for birth deformation? And there is Enid, Colleen’s younger sister, who pops out babies one after the other. Colleen resolves many of Enid’s problems without the benefit of her own brood of children.

It is an old story: man versus nature. Davidson tackled these problems in an easy manner, no hysteria but underneath it all, we are suffering with the main characters. Highly recommended.

My gratitude to Netgalley and Scribner for this pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

After seeing Damnation Spring as a Book of the Month option and then all over Instagram, I added it to my wishlist. I happened to see it as a Read Now title on NetGalley and grabbed it. I knew from the synopsis that this wasn't going to be a light, easy read. It was going to be intense.

This book broke my heart several times over and put it back together. It's a love letter to the environment, but so much more. It's a family drama, addressing pregnancy losses, marriage, and relationships. It addresses the problems and effects of pesticides. It discusses the environment.

Damnation Spring is an incredibly powerful and moving book - quite possibly one the most moving I've read so far this year. While some parts were a bit slow, overall, I couldn't put this book down.

4/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This was really beautifully written. Davidson understands how to make characters that are easy to relate to and suuuuper easy to empathize with. I found myself intensely frustrated /with/ them. The prose is also beautiful - definitely wordy, but I don't find that to be a negative at all. I think it flows well.

Damnation Spring
by Ash Davidson
Scribner
General Fiction (Adult)
Pub Date 03 Aug 2021 | Archive Date 03 Aug 2021
Thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for the ARC. I enjoyed it somewhat. It was one I finished in a few days. It started slow but picked ups and you get to the meat of the story.

What a debut! This book is phenomenal and you would not want to miss it. Why did I pick this book out of all the books that are on queue on my kindle? I don't know but I am glad I did! Set in the late 70s in the woods in a California redwood logging community, where its people depends on the life of the woods but not realizing the damage they are causing to it. It was hard to put down! Lovely read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who's able to pick a book up.

a good debut. i think ash davidson will do well in the coming years. i willmost certainly keep an eye out for her books

DAMNATION SPRINGS is a beautifully written novel about a difficult topic: lives on the edge of poverty. There are the age-old competitions between: workers and owners, environmental activists vs. loggers, and those between native dwellers vs. recent arrivals. While there is a lot of disagreement portrayed in this tale, there is also love. And the vicissitudes of fate. Author Ash Davidson has done a very good job with this, her first novel. She will be a definite author to follow. A shout out to her also, for her Arizona roots and current life! I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

I figured that reading this book would teach me a lot about California redwoods and the logging industry bent on harvesting them, but I didn't realize I would feel so much--love and frustration--for the characters. Damnation Spring is a beautifully written, engrossing book that tells the story of a family, a logging town, and a team of conservationists. Somehow Ash Davidson makes us sympathize with each disparate group, one after another. Rich Gundersen comes from four generations of tree-toppers and, along with his wife Colleen, has rarely left their community amid the California redwoods. Colleen wants desperately to have a second baby, but a series of miscarriages and a devastating stillbirth have her questioning her worth as a woman. When other women in the town start confiding stories of their own losses, Colleen begins to wonder if the anti-pesticide/nature-loving activists may be onto something. Davidson offers a ton of detail about logging and draws a vivid picture of life in their gritty town and Damnation Grove. There are so many layers to peel back here, each one revealing some new truth about human nature. Damnation Spring is not an "easy" read, but it is a page-turner. You can feel the novel building toward some kind of crescendo, like a train hurtling toward a washed-out bridge, but you can't look away.

Davidson's book is excellent. I was immediately drawn into her story. I love beginning a novel like Davidson's where the writing is so strong and crisp. Davidson's characters are excellent, and I was eager to discover their stories. The focus of the story was fascinating, and I learned quite a bit. I really appreciated her author's note with details about further learning. Excellent writing, and I can't wait to read more by her in the future!

This was a really great story that got lost in a sea of words. It was too long by about half. More concise writing would have let the story shine.

This was such a good book! The characters stay with you long after you finish the book and I loved all the twists and turns. My first time to read a book by this author but I cannot wait to read more!

Rich and Colleen Gundersen live in a house on land they do not own. Rich's family has been logging for many years, and he has never known any other way to provide for his family. But the industry isn't what it once was. Environmentalists want the trees saved and it appears that the pesticides they use might be ruining the water and their health. For a town that relies on logging, what is the most important fact? People who would leave them unemployed, because of their scientific claims or a way of life that has worked for generations.
This is the story of one marriage and also a community. Rich and Colleen are both focused on different things. Rich is getting too old for this kind of work but is too young to retire. He makes a risky decision to take all of their savings and a hefty mortgage to make his dream of becoming his own boss come true. But numerous forces are working against him, and he may lose much more than money.
Colleen loves her family but has just suffered through another miscarriage. She desperately wants another child and when it seems the herbicides used by the logging company are causing irreparable harm, will she stand by Rich and his way of life, or do the hard but right thing? Colleen has made bad grief-fueled decisions already, and she may well be the catalyst to destroy Rich.
I ended up really enjoyed this book. Some parts seemed to slow me down though and took away from my overall experience. A lot of logger jargon, and while I suppose that was necessary to make you see how much this life meant to Rich, it became more than a bit of a page slower rather than a page-turner. I also really did not understand Rich and Colleen's relationship until I was very far along into the book. For two people who supposedly loved each other, they both seemed willing to let their secrets and lies ruin their marriage. Everything does make sense and come together in the end, but it seemed like a shorter book without so much detail would have made it flow much better. Finally, don't even ask me about the ending, because it just broke my heart. This may sound as if I didn't like this book, but after thinking about it for a few days, I really did. The underlying themes were extremely thought-provoking, and if I was in Rich's shoes, I am not sure what my decision would have been.

Damnation Spring was a different type of book for me to read. I don't know what I was expecting but this was not it.
I found the book to be dry ..very boring and I had a hard time following the story especially with so many different characters.
I did not finish..ended at page 75.

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

“ ‘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.’ “ 🌲

For generations, Rich Gundersen’s family has chopped a livelihood out of the California redwood forest. Rich’s employer, Sanderson Timber Co., is making a killing at Damnation Grove. The herbicides the company uses to keep the roads clear were promised to be safe. But Rich’s wife Colleen has lost 8 pregnancies, and people are dying of cancer all around the forest. They drink from the creek. Eat fish out of the streams. But now an environmentalist group has descended upon the area, threatening the loggers livelihood and the company’s profit margin. When Colleen starts to question the safety of the creek water, it puts in jeopardy not only their health and marriage, but also Rich’s job. Can Rich and Colleen take on the logging company, the government, and the environmentalists and survive?

This is a debut?? I’m sorry, what?!? I am gutted. Gutted I tell you. Wow. This book was just…it was…it was just beautiful and gut wrenching and devastating and hopeful. It is told from multiple points of view which I appreciate as it gives multiple perspectives and makes for a more well rounded story. I don’t even know what else to say, so I’ll keep this one short and sweet. Wow. Just wow.

Damnation Spring is a quiet yet deeply evocative family drama set in a 1977 rural California logging town. It follows Colleen, a lay midwife, Rich, a fourth generation logger, and Chub, their 5 year old son over the course of a year. Colleen has suffered many miscarriages and recently a stillbirth, and struggles with her desire for another child. Rich has invested his life's savings in a parcel of land with an eye towards securing his family a better future. Their community is inextricably intertwined with the logging industry, the people of the town spilling sweat and blood for the local logging company for generations. Now their way of life is literally and practically eroding before their eyes.

I was completely engrossed by this story. It took me a little while to settle in and get to know the characters, but once I did I was fully immersed. Politics, in-fighting, relationships impacted, lives changed as a community clings to a vanishing way of life and we're reminded nature is not something which exists for our consumption, rather a complex eco-system we are a part of. This story of a tug of war between capitalism and environmental degradation, economy vs. ecology, is incredibly relevant today

Damnation Spring is a beautiful book! I loved it and now count it among my most favorite reads for 2021.

Rich Gunderson comes from a long line of tree toppers - a dangerous job in which he climbs high the canopy in the forests of ancient redwoods. His wife is a amuteur midwife and asists the locals while dreaming of a second child of her own. They live together with their son Chubb in Damnation Spring, a small town in the Pacific Midwest.

This sprawling epic novel could take place in the present, but it's set in the late 70's when Americans are still determining the government role in regulation and safety in the environment. The logging company uses strong herbicides in which the town people had not yet connected to a high rate of birth defects. It comes to a head when a native son returns to collect data on the water and educate the townspeople on the dangers.

My review cannot describe the vast beauty in this novel - the descriptions, the emotions and the complexity of the Damnation Springs town. This first novel brings to mind the work of Richard Powers, Jonathan Franzen and Ian McEwan. I highly recommend you grab it now and immerse yourself in this stunning novel.!
Highly Recommended. Thank you to #NetGalley and #Scribner for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #DamnationSpring

Damnation Spring is a rich family saga—something I am generally not drawn to, but the environmental themes were knocking on my door—with an epic finale. The length of this book is mighty, but I flew through it in just two sittings because I was so drawn to both Colleen and Rich’s storylines, both separate and joint.

Something this book did exquisitely, where many fail to succeed, is add clear dual-sided context to those lost in climate crisis messaging. I, like many others, tend to hone in on ‘why is this transition to *insert something renewable* so difficult—let’s just do it and be done’ without the consideration of those who will be lost in said transition. Timber is one of those industries that is held by the neck of lobbyists on both sides, rarely without consideration for those dependent on timber for their livelihood.

My only thought after reading was this book was just a bit too long, but don’t let that deter you from picking it up. The writing (specifically nature writing) was gorgeous and accurate, and its a family I am still thinking about today.