This book wasn’t for me. I don’t think it was necessarily a bad book but I realized the deeper I got the more it was not my style. Writing was well done

I have some mixed feelings about this title. The characters are well-developed, believable, and quite a few will catch you by the heartstrings. The plot is interesting, but also a little discombobulated. Is this a story about dangers of logging to people and the environment? Is it a story about corporations and politician taking advantage of underserved populations (indigenous people, the poor, the uneducated)? Is it a story about a family doing the best it can to survive tragedy and poverty to find a way to a better life? All of these ring true, and while I appreciate a complex, fully developed plot, the majority of the book focused on all of these equally, leaving me feeling disoriented. The last quarter of the book focused on the family central to the narrative, which is the storyline I felt most connected to, and therefore I found it redeeming. I got a bit bogged down in the chapters that focused on the technicalities of logging and I wasn't sure of their purpose to the overall storyline. However, all told, I enjoyed this book, and by the end, was questioning if those "logging chapters" were more important than I originally gave them credit for. I'm glad I spent time with this novel. Thank you NetGalley and publishers for providing a digital ARC for review.

I am so sad that I didn't love this more. I really really really wanted to. And there is nothing wrong here. In fact, there is a lot that is perfectly right. There is just so much detail about the logging life that sometimes the story itself got lost, or I got bogged down. If you cut through all that extra stuff, the story is beautiful and sad. It's a hard life these people live and I'm glad I was able to get a look inside.

I've been thinking a lot about this book and am having a really hard time coming up with the words for how I feel about it! I really enjoyed it, that I can say. If it were a streaming show (which I can totally see it as a show) it would be labeled a drama. There is tension from all angles! The writing was wonderfully done so that it felt like I was right there in the Northern California forest. I live in Oregon and I've seen the push and pull between loggers and conservationists throughout the PNW. I feel like it does a good job of showing the struggles the logging communities have faced over the years. The story is not just about logging, it's also about small town relationships and how interconnected their lives can be. The characters in this story felt like real people. The ending was a little disappointing in my opinion, but when looking at the book as a whole, it was wonderful.

😢 This is how I feel after reading this book. I am gutted. The story is all about a logging community trying to hold on to the ways of the past and how much a family can withstand. We follow Colleen and Rich as they raise their son "Chub" in the redwoods of Northern California, just trying to survive and make a life for themselves. Their marriage is tested throughout from both the inside and outside forces. This book is beautifully written and emotionally draining in such a good way. I would highly recommend it. Thank you, NetGalley for the eARC. 4 stars.

I wanted to love this song more than I did. When I read the synopsis, I thought it would be great! This author is very talented. The descriptions had me feeling like I was right there, however, the story itself fell a little short for me.

A story about a small logging community of people who are suffering both financially and watching their health decline. Colleen and Rich live in the Pacific Northwest and have one son. Colleen longs for more children but after eight miscarriages she's loosing hope that will ever happen. She's had every test possible done but still no answers, until rumors start spreading that the chemicals being used are poisoning the town. Children are being born with malformations or dying, many people are sick, and the logging company is denying any responsibility. All the Gunderson's want is to protect their family and their friends, but soon they will find themselves up against the company execs and they play dirty. How can this town prove what's going on is because of herbicides? They can pull samples from the Damnation Springs and make a long list of all the health issues the town has, but it will be very hard to beat this and in the end the town has already suffered so much. Babies can't be brought back, crippling illness cannot be reversed, but they need to do what's right in order to fight for the next generation.

This story is not something I am typically drawn to so I am thankful for the opportunity to read and review something out of my comfort zone in exchange for an honest review.

The conflict between loggers need for jobs to survive and environmentalists need to protect the land for the future was an interesting idea for a plot.

The first half of the book was like reading a research paper on the logging industry. I don’t think the actual story line even started until around page 200 but even then it was a slow start to the plot. I wasn’t fully invested until the ending.

“…what was hope but belief, no matter how rare the miracle?”

DAMNATION SPRING is a powerful, captivating novel about one family in the middle of a conflict that threatens to irrevocably change a small logging community. The story takes place from 1977-8 on California’s rugged northern coast. Logging the ancient, beautiful redwood trees native to the area has sustained most of the white families in the area for generations, including Rich Gundersen, his younger wife, Colleen, and their son, Chub. With more forest protected as state and federal parkland and government regulations making the profit margins less generous, the men who work for Sanderson, the local logging company, find their livelihoods increasingly threatened. This is even more the case for Rich, who takes a gamble purchasing a large swath of old-growth trees to ensure a future for his family. Meanwhile Colleen, a midwife, has endured a string of miscarriages. She begins noticing more stillbirths, birth defects, and other ailments in local fauna. Her old boyfriend, Daniel Bywater, an enrolled member of the Yurok tribe with a doctorate in fisheries biology, enlists her to help test water in the spring on their property. When herbicides sprayed by Sanderson and the forest service are detected in the water and connected to the community’s afflictions, Rich and Colleen are split on either side of a dispute, testing their marriage and their values.

This was an intimate reading experience for me. I grew up in Humboldt County, just south of Del Norte county where the novel is set. My grandfather and great-grandfather both worked in the lumber industry, processing the wood harvested in the area. And even though this story happens twenty years before I was born, the people, their conflicts, and the atmosphere were so achingly recognizable to me. There’s a particular blend of fierce independence and unquestioning communal care in impoverished rural communities like these, where people are both deeply private and constantly in each other’s business. With that contradiction comes an almost reflexive distaste for outsiders, especially anyone seen as a threat to the community, and even more so people speaking a language that feels condescending to locals - which is part of what fuels the conflict between the loggers and the environmentalists. So much of what was said by characters in the novel I heard echoed throughout my childhood, reverberating through ongoing arguments about government regulations and individual autonomy, supporting local economies and preserving natural habitats. And of course, Davidson’s stunning descriptions of everything from sweeping redwood forests to homespun domestic items felt like home. All this kept me invested in the story and provided a space for me to work out some of my own mixed feelings about my hometown and my relationship to it.

DAMNATION SPRING is a meditative, evocative story. I initially found it moving too slowly for me, so I picked up the audiobook instead, which helped. Davidson has clearly done an intense amount of research on that time period in Del Norte and also knows the area personally, as she lived there for several years as a child. I do think at times the novel is overly descriptive, pulling me out of the story as I struggled to picture just what kind of tree-topping maneuver was happening. Davidson captures the people so well, creating characters that you root for even when they make frustrating decisions, with familial relationships bound by blood or other loyalties, affections mostly unspoken but no less strong for it. I especially liked the arc of Rich and Colleen’s relationship, their quiet, committed attention to each other, the subtleties of their disagreement, the difficulties of speaking aloud their private pain. The addition of Chub’s voice as a narrator in addition to Rich and Colleen was refreshing and, at times, gut-wrenching. I did find the sexism and anti-indigenous sentiments hard to stomach, though I’m certain it’s accurate. There are many issues explored here that continue to be relevant today: sustainable forestry, water quality, erosion, suppression of indigenous practices. It’s eerie to read this historical novel like this, seeing what has already been lost to environmental degradation and knowing how much more is yet to come. Overall it’s a perceptive, humanizing, and beautiful novel. Thank you to Scribner for the review copy!

Content warnings: injury, chronic pain, miscarriage, infant death, animal death, death of a loved one, grief, sexism/misogyny, ableist slurs, arson, violence

After hearing a lot of buzz around Damnation Spring, I was really excited to receive a review copy on NetGalley. This book did not disappoint. Damnation Spring is set in a logging town in the Pacific Northwest during the late 1970’s. Rich’s family have worked as loggers in the Redwood forest for generations. Rich has a plan to improve things for his family. Unfortunately, after risking a lot to make his dreams come true, a series of problems including clashes with environmentalists, big business, and government, mudslides, and dark mysteries.

While Rich wants to provide monetarily with his family, his wife Colleen is struggling with the idea she may not be able to grow their family with a second child. After enduring a series of miscarriages herself, Colleen, an amateur midwife, notices a pattern of miscarriages and birth defects among women in the area. A friend from her past helps make the connection that an herbicide used by the logging companies may be harming the town’s health.

Damnation Spring is a long novel with a lot of details. Despite the length, the format of alternating perspectives with short chapters makes it feel like a fast read. This novel does a great job of showing the monetary, health, and environmental effects that big businesses can cause.

I really loved the premise of this book and the time period/location in the PNW are all things that made me request this one. I actually put this one down and came back to it several times because I just couldn’t seem to get invested. The writing is decent, a bit overly descriptive at times for me, but I just couldn’t make it stick. I think other readers will enjoy this one and I’ll definitely check out another from this authors.

Thank you to the publisher for my review copy. All opinions are my own.

Hmmmmmm. I am conflicted on this title. Let's just go ahead and ramble shall we? This one was not for me. I can't say why exactly. The writing was impeccable. The atmosphere...very well done. I tried many different ways and many different times to no success. I have put this title down.

I liked this book but I didn't love this book. The story was interesting which is what kept me reading to the end but it was very long. It is about the logging industry and used a lot of logging terms that I did not understand so I'm sure that didn't help. I also wasn't thrilled with how the characters ended up. But it was an interesting read which is why I kept going. The author keeps you invested in the characters lives and you find yourself cheering them on.

Damnation Springs nails a realistic and heartfelt depiction of a family, but misses the mark when telling a well rounded story. It is slow paced and some of the writing is hard to follow. There is a lot going on and no one focal point.

This book had great potential for me but unfortunately had so much logging jargon that I found it difficulty to enjoy. If you love descriptive writing, which definitely did add to the experience of the book, then you may love this one.

I thought this would be a book that I wouldn't be able to put down. Personally, I found it to be a bit slow and I wasn't running to constantly pick it up to see what would happen next.

This is a book about a logging community in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970's. Rich is a fourth generation logger and married to his wife Colleen. Rich and Colleen have one son, and Colleen desperately wants another child after experiencing multiple miscarriages throughout their marriage. Many of the women in the community are also experiencing heartbreaking losses. Is it coincidence or is there something more going on in the community to be causing this? Could it be the herbicides that are sprayed consistently in the community? Loggers and environmentalists face off, the environmentalists want the trees saved while the loggers want to make their living. Will they eventually get down to the facts of what is causing so many issues in Damnation Grove?

I am interested in most books that are related to the impending environmental crisis, especially those set where I live: California. The premise was interesting - a story of an intimate, small family (a couple!), a tight knit community, but ultimately it got too technical with the loggers vs. environmentalists for me to engage adequately. With such an intriguing plot and little to grasp onto in the storytelling, I felt like I had swiped right on the wrong tinder date. Still, the technical writing was robust and is impressive as a debut novel.

Damnation Spring was an engaging story about a Pacific Northwest Logging Town. It is a novel that will move you, pull at your heart strings, and make you think about the choices one makes in life. It was a window into a community I knew little about, but came to care deeply about.

Rich Gunderson is from generations that owned land in Klamath. He meets and marries Colleen who he loves deeply. They have a son, Chub who both adore and are so grateful for. Sadly, Colleen has had many miscarriages and the most recent was particularly devastating. These are such honest and decent people.

Conflicts arise when the land that Rich and the men in his community who work as loggers starts to come into question. Environmentalists, who really don’t have a stake in the area show up to protest. Worst of all, the wealthy corporate owner that everyone works for is spraying toxic chemicals. This starts to pit the close knit families against one another. Colleen also works as a midwife and has seen many other women deliver still born babies. There are incidents of developmental delays in children, people getting cancer, and other health problems occurring. Could the EPA approved chemicals being sprayed be wrecking devastating havoc on this community’s lives? Colleen starts to really look into this, but Rich wants her to stop since it jeopardizes his and his colleagues ability to work. This strain may be too much for the Gunderson’s marriage to endure.

I just got swept up in the horrific attitude displayed toward people when money has so much power. It is unfair and there is a complete lack of justice, yet it continues. This shown such a strong light on the power of family and love to persevere through hardship. It was beautifully written and the stories of these families is one that will stay with me. Excellent Novel that will change the way you think.

Thank you NetGalley, Ash Davidson, and Scribner for granting me a copy of this wonderful book. I appreciate it so much.

This was a very interesting story but I did get a little bogged down in all of the many logging details. I liked the premise of the plot, the conflict of the town and the conflict between Colleen and Rich. It was well written.
Many thanks to Scribner and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I very much enjoyed this story. It was wonderfully written. I look forward to the author’s next book!