At the turn of the century, from the late 1800’s on, my grandfather logged his way across the United States and north into Canada. He owned his own company and my grandmother cooked for the crew. My mother was the last of their 17 children. All my uncles were lumberjacks. Many of their male children were jacks. My father married my mother and joined their ranks. They were tough untamed men with hearts as big as the forests they decimated.

I tell you this because I want you to know that when I tell you how authentic the voice in this novel by singer/songwriter Josh Ritter is, I know what I’m talking about.

From the Goodreads blurb: “In the tiny timber town of Cordelia, Idaho, ninety-nine year old Weldon Applegate recounts his life in all its glory, filled with tall tales writ large with murder, mayhem, avalanches and bootlegging. It’s the story of dark pine forests brewing with ancient magic, and Weldon’s struggle as a boy to keep his father’s inherited timber claim, the Lost Lot, from the ravenous clutches of Linden Laughlin.”

From his hospital bed, the mythic Weldon Applegate moves back and forth in time narrating the two interwoven threads of his life.

One is the story of his youth and coming of age. His father, Tom, was a lumberjack who gave up logging for his mother. Upon his mother’s death, thirteen year old Weldon and his father moved to operate a store in the small timber town of Cordelia, Idaho. Tom had inherited the Lost Lot, a treacherous timber claim on a mountain just outside the town. They hadn't been there long when the legendary Linden Laughlin showed up and connived his way into their lives. Tom was seduced into breaking his vow to his wife and headed out logging the Lost Lot with Laughlin. He died on the mountain soon afterwards. The magnitude of Laughlin’s evil becomes obvious when, in an attempt at stealing Weldon's inheritance, he terrorizes Weldon and Sohvia, the Witch woman who lived with them. Once Weldon realizes he can’t sell the Lost Lot, he returns to Cordelia, gathers supplies and courage, and heads up the mountain to work with the crew.

In the story of his later years Weldon talks about his more recent mortal enemy, Joe Mouffreau, son of the original mill owner. Joe is a greedy braggart about 15 years younger than Weldon. “A lot of people had to perish to keep Joe’s war stories fresh, but it was a sacrifice that he was willing to make.” If the two of them are enemies in life, they represent conflict on a much larger scale. Theirs is difference in world views. It's the difference between integrity and deceit. It's the difference between generosity and greed. It's the difference between preserving the natural world and destroying it. Weldon, after working the mountain in his thirteenth year, never felled another tree on his land. He ended up giving it to a Nature Preservers group. In contrast, Joe clearcut the mountain he inherited from his father.

Ritter’s beautifully crafted words transport the reader into an enchanted forest and logging town right smack in the middle of this coming of age tale. Along with Weldon, they get to figure out just what it means to be a hero. I wish I had Ritter's way with words to tell you how brilliant this books is. Weldon is as authentic a character as any I have ever read. He could well have been any of my relatives. Reading his story brought them back to me in all their rough hewn glory.

Weldon Applegate has lived a long and colorful life, which he recounts while lying in his bed waiting to die. Orphaned at 14, he takes control of his family's "cursed" land in Cordelia, Idaho and becomes a lumberjack, a profession which is incredibly dangerous. There's a certain tall tale element to this, with an archenemy in Joe and lots of adventures. And then there are the songs. Know that this moves around a bit in time and gentle readers should be prepared for profanity. Fans of this genre- elderly man reflecting on his life- will like this for the different setting and approach. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. An entertaining read.

Didn't quite know what I'd gotten into - and for the first hundred or so pages I wasn't sure I could stick with it.

Then I was drawn by Weldon, his life and the strange assortment of characters he met.

Quick read - good get away novel.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All!

Unfortunately, this book didn't really work for me. I found it hard to get into, and I didn't really connect with Weldon or his experiences. I couldn't really follow the storyline, and there was nothing that helped me feel any kinship with the characters. The story kind of winds around, and there doesn't seem to be any cohesion between the various pieces of it.

I'm sure there are those out there who would enjoy this book, but it just wasn't for me.

This is a hard book to pigeonhole. It is part adventure, part tall-tale, part memoir, part I-don’t-know-what. The story is glorious - it’s everything a little boy dreams of when wishing for an exciting life. Peopled with crazy, larger-than-life characters, a delightful protagonist, an awful arch nemesis, and plenty of wild and wooly action, this is a story to be told around a roaring fire.

I will also say, though, that this is a story with a slow burn. It moves along like a float down the river - faster at times, then a slow drift, and back again. This takes some persistence and attention in reading, but it is well worth the effort. As I was reading, the rhythm and the story often reminded me of David Wallace’s novel “Big Fish” and the subsequent Tim Burton film of the same name. I would love to see this story on film. Such fun!

You won't find the tiny timber town of Cordelia, Idaho, anywhere except in ninety-nine year old Weston Applegate's memory, where the town is alive with bootlegging, murder, and a masculine mischief so common in tales of the Old West. Between Josh Ritter's capable hands, Weston's coming of age struggle to live up to his family legacy is smoothed into a new American myth: The Extinction of the Lumber Jacks.
The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All fulfills the promises in the publisher's description. It's filled with adventure and humor cleverly framed at the start of every chapter by an old man's musings. Telling his story from his deathbed, Weston is charmingly thirteen and ninety-nine at once. His stories from his upbringing to his young adulthood to his ripened age feel so real, helped along by Ritter's voice. This feels like a book that you might be able to discuss in English literature classes alongside "The Luck of Roaring Camp" by Bret Harte.

The protagonist of songwriter Josh Ritter’s second novel is ninety-nine-year-old Weldon Applegate, lying on his deathbed in a hospital. Tubes are coming out of his arms, and he is on oxygen. He seems to this reader to be passing in and out of consciousness.

When he is out of it, Weldon returns to the forests of Cordelia, Idaho, almost a century earlier; back to a time when he was a child and the Applegates were considered the best lumberjacks in the industry. When his head is clear, he recounts a life of murder, mayhem, avalanches, bootlegging and all sorts of axe-swinging adventures.

Weldon’s father, Tom, was a lumberjack who promised his wife that he'd stay safe and never jack again. After his wife dies, he and Weldon move to Cordelia, a town full of lumberjacks and near the Lost Lot, a cursed tract of land that Tom owns. Tom works in the town general store but finds himself making a deal with a larger-than-life lumberjack-of-legend, Linden Laughlin, who turns out to be a devil in disguise. Weldon tells us the whole story in tall-tale style from those times through when technology and industry take over.

The story structure follows Weldon’s mental state, moving from one adventure to another without any division. I found this hard to follow. The language is rough, but realistic for the time period. It didn’t bother me, but I just didn’t like the story. For me, the action moved a snail’s pace, but I think it was me and not the story. I wasn’t as drawn in as I had hoped to be, but I will admit to learning a lot about lumberjacking. Therefore, “The Great Glorious Goddam of It All” receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Testing feedback feature. Please disregard.

I do love Josh Ritter, tho :)

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I kept hearing about this book, was eager to read ARC.

Mortal enemies can keep us alive
This is one of many quotes I enjoyed in this book. It is evident that a songwriter wrote it,
the words seem to flow like no other book I have read. They had almost a melody in my head.
I also saw it playing out as a movie before my eyes, this should be adapted to screens.

This book was received as an ARC from HARLEQUIN – Trade Publishing (U.S. & Canada), Hanover Square Press in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

From when I read the first chapter title "Mortal Enemy" I thought I was in for a book about how everyone has wronged Weldon of his past and what he discovered to help him along the journey since that is something everyone struggles with one way or another. After reading the first 50 pages, I discovered that this was a heartfelt family drama and a 99 year old man reminiscing of his younger days working for his family lot and working hard to be better than the competition. The theme I got from this book was all about family and passion and even at 99 years old Weldon's passion still remain strong and the love he has for his family is very admirable (even though he has a unique way of showing it). I can't wait to hear the opinions and thoughts of our library community and see their take of this book.

We will consider adding this title to our Adult Fiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

Weldon Applegate was born to be a lumberjack. His father Tom and his grandfather were legendary lumberjacks, but his mother decreed that her son would live a more ordinary, safe life, and his father put away his ax and went to work in his wife’s family store.
Weldon lived to be ninety-nine years old. As he lay dying, grievously injured by his mortal enemy, Joe Mouffreau, his mind wandered back over his long life. His mother died when he was ten, and his father moved them to the lumber town of Cordelia, near the Lost Lot, the treacherous logging land his father inherited. He tried to honor his vow to his wife, working in the general store, but he was lured back to the mountain by a man who promised riches, but delivered death.
At age thirteen, Weldon became an orphan. The people of Cordelia were supportive, but he refused all their good advice and set off to the Lost Lot to complete what his father had started. In the years that followed, Weldon and the town of Cordelia went through some glorious heights and some devastating lows, finally settling down into a routine existence. Weldon lived in a trailer on the Lost Lot and lived a simple life among the trees. Joe Mouffreau lived near him in a gaudy mini-mansion, and the feud that started in their childhood ended in a violent and bloody confrontation.
This delightfully titled historical novel explores the wild and wooly life to be found in lumber towns: colorful, rowdy, exciting and dangerous. The characters are fully drawn, coming to life on the page.

Josh Ritter took a hiatus from his lucrative career as a singer/songwriter to try his hand as a novelist. Readers will rejoice in this diversion when The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All is released this Fall. Charming, illuminating and tender, Ritter has crafted a layered novel that clearly benefits from his talents. The descriptions of Cordelia, a Lumberjack town circa the Prohibition Era, are richly described and immersive. The plot is told in a way that hearkens back to the bards singing their odes of ancient adventures. Even the dialogue recalls the fabler who stretches truth at will. This is a yarn spun by Weldon Applegate, who we follow over the course of his life from his teen years up to his deathbed. At 14, Weldon suddenly becomes an orphan and now must fight enemies of Herculean strength to protect his inheritance. He unwaveringly strives to fulfill his family’s destiny by logging their land, even though it has been haunted and labeled as cursed. Others in Cordelia try to take advantage of Weldon’s inferior age and size with extortion and threats, but they underestimate young Weldon’s determination and cunning. Ritter’s novel is simultaneously laudatory to this subculture and unrelenting in its graphic depictions of its violence and punishing environment. Weldon’s initiation demonstrates the stark realities of those times and evokes a sense of nostalgia for a lost art. The The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All is not your typical bildungsroman-it is a tall tale in itself, a reflection of changing times as the old stories attempt to preserve themselves in modern times.

Thanks to the author and Hanover Square Press for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

2.8

I will start this by saying I'm 100% not the target demographic for this book. I was reeled in by the Southern vibe, the promise of murder and bootlegging and epic lumberjacks- but this story was just not exciting enough for me. I think maybe if I was was a fan of peacocking Westerns and mustache twirling villains, or if I was the type who could picture myself in Weldon's shoes, I would have enjoyed this. But I am none of those things.

I did still find it interesting. There's enough going on that you're going to find something in it to be interested in- I just didn't find it compelling. For whatever reason I just couldn't pay attention. Maybe it was in the pacing- and the jumping back and forth in time certainly didn't help- but regardless I found it hard to keep reading without just letting my eyes slide off the page. But in the moments I was paying attention, there were some more exciting ideas and interesting threats, just not enough for me to fully care.

Honestly, I probably would have enjoyed the whole thing more as a movie. There is an atmospheric quality in the way this whole thing is set up, and I might have found something more to hook me if I wasn't being dragged around by Weldon and was able to fully appreciate what was being shown to me with less bias.

Though I have to contradict myself a bit, by saying my favorite thing about this book was actually the way it was written. I didn't enjoy reading the story itself per se, but I did enjoy reading it. I like the way Ritter writes, the style is easy to read and lyrical in a rusty kind of way.

With the quality of the main story, and my disinterest in Weldon's life as an older man, there really just wasn't anything for me personally to connect to in this book. I can see other's enjoying it, but I couldn't get interested.

(I read an ARC of this novel provided free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, Netgalley!)

Oh my gosh this was such a fun read. It's about how the modern world finally caught up to the world of tall tales and legends.

Weldon Applegate is 99 and telling the story of his life. His father, Tom, was a lumberjack who promised his wife that he'd stay safe and never jack again. After his wife dies, he and Weldon move to Cordelia, Idaho, a town full of lumberjacks and near the Lost Lot, a cursed tract of land owned by Tom. Tom works in the town general store but finds himself making a deal with a larger-than-life lumberjack-of-legend, Linden Laughlin, who turns out to be a devil in disguise. Weldon tells us the whole story in tall-tale style from those times through when technology and industry take over.

It's a super exciting and well-written. Definitely a fun read. This the first book by Josh Ritter I've read, but it won't be my last.

This book was lyrically haunting and beautifully written. The prose was incredible.

I felt like I got a true insight to life as a Jack, as well as the turmoil that can come with it.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The raw, glorious, scary, gripping, sad and changing world of the lumberjack is captured in vivid detail by the author as seen through the eyes of nearly 100 yr old Weldon Applegate. The reader is immersed in the life of Applegate from boyhood to old age as he recounts tales of adventure, obsession, passion and joy, of life in the great woods from illegal booze and larger than life, practically mythic characters, to the small greed of small men, modern life and microwave ovens. The voices felt authentic, the look back wistful, not bitter. And in the end what remains is the forest, defiant, strong, resistant to the end.

This was a slow read for me. I just couldn't get into it. It did have a tall tale vibe, but it bounced back and forth a lot. I could see a grandfather telling this story to his grandson about his life. It wasn't bad, just not for me.

I never thought I would have any interest in reading a book about lumberjacking, but Weldon grabbed my attention right at the beginning and kept it to the last page.

Josh Ritter is a singer/songwriter. This is his first novel and he's created a unique, magical universe. Weldon Applegate is ninety-nine years old and on his death bed. As his life dwindles away, he recounts the story of his life. He grew up in the small town of Cordelia, Idaho hearing stories of his ancestors, legendary lumberjacks. Weldon wants to grow up to join the ranks of his ancestors. He had to use all that inherited skill to keep his father's land, the Lost Lot, out of the hands of the evil Linden Laughlin. Ritter fills the story with ancient magic, murder, intrigue, saloon songs and a lot of heart! Readers will enjoy this new voice in popular fantasy/literature. Many thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.

"Memory has a way of growing things, of improving them. The hardships get harder, the good times get better and the whole damn arc of a life takes on a mystic glow that only memory can give it." "...when you get as old as me...people want to hear your whole life story...life back then...when you live to be ninety-nine years you pretty much got the living part down...".

Weldon Applegate was born into a family of lumberjacks of meteoric reputation. Tom Applegate, Weldon's daddy, had promised Weldon's mama that he would no longer brave the dangers of a jack's life. Tom had "conquered his true nature and found safe harbor...the steady sureties of settled life." Now a widower, Tom ran a general store with his thirteen year old son, Weldon in the tiny timber town of Cordelia, Idaho. Tom had inherited "the most lumberjackingest place on the face of the Earth...The Lost Lot...a murderous, glorious ground with the biggest white pines there ever were...". Sohvia the Witch's prognostications advised against it, however, Tom threw caution to the wind, partnered up with Linden Laughlin [the best jack that had ever lived] and hired a team of jacks who were promised double pay to take down trees in the mountainous area, an area subject to avalanches and brutal winter storms. Upon Tom Applegate's death, thirteen year old Weldon acquired the Lost Lot and his granddaddy's ax.

"The woods are no place for a wee bairn" according to Linden Laughlin. "Maybe Linden wasn't a man at all but...a kind of forest spirit...he was seven feet tall and had three rows of teeth...as a woods boss he could strike fear and respect...lead...jacks up any mountain with the knowledge that the timber would get taken out..." Linden called Weldon "cub". With granddaddy's ax in hand, Weldon made the ten mile trek to the Lost Lot. "There was a time before I'd ever seen the ornery side of myself. All that changed-that long ago December night...I would be transformed into a lumberjack."

"...even at my age of ninety nine years...knowledge of [Joe Mouffreau's] essential wretchedness has come to shape my belief that our mortal enemies can keep us alive...[Joe] lying, foolish, condescending, big talking...convinced his daddy to start a 'fancy new way' just to log the holy hell out of the St. Anne."

The town of Cordy was now empty, silent, with no jacks stopping by...no laughing...no cussing. "The jacks are dying out. Their time has come. The World has been coming for a long, long time." With humor, magic and a dose of profanity, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter weaves a tale of lumberjacking in the American West at the beginning of the twentieth century. Weldon's pluck and
stick-to-itiveness to uphold his family tradition created a fun-filled adventurous read. I absolutely loved it!

Thank you HARLEQUIN/Hanover Square Press and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.