Damnation Spring
Ash Davidson
Aug 2021 · Simon and Schuster
5.0star
1 reviewreport
Ebook
464
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2021 by Newsweek, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times
“A glorious book—an assured novel that’s gorgeously told.” —The New York Times Book Review
“An incredibly moving epic about an unforgettable family.” —CBS Sunday Morning
“[An] absorbing novel…I felt both grateful to have known these people and bereft at the prospect of leaving them behind.” —The Washington Post
A stunning novel about love, work, and marriage that asks how far one family and one community will go to protect their future.
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. But when Colleen, grieving the loss of a recent pregnancy and desperate to have a second child, challenges the logging company’s use of the herbicides she believes are responsible for the many miscarriages in the community, Colleen and Rich find themselves on opposite sides of a budding conflict. As tensions in the town rise, they threaten the very thing the Gundersens 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.
Named a Best Book of 2021 by Newsweek, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times
“A glorious book—an assured novel that’s gorgeously told.” —The New York Times Book Review
“An incredibly moving epic about an unforgettable family.” —CBS Sunday Morning
“[An] absorbing novel…I felt both grateful to have known these people and bereft at the prospect of leaving them behind.” —The Washington Post
A stunning novel about love, work, and marriage that asks how far one family and one community will go to protect their future.
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. But when Colleen, grieving the loss of a recent pregnancy and desperate to have a second child, challenges the logging company’s use of the herbicides she believes are responsible for the many miscarriages in the community, Colleen and Rich find themselves on opposite sides of a budding conflict. As tensions in the town rise, they threaten the very thing the Gundersens 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.
Ratings and reviews
5.0
1 review
brf1948
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January 24, 2022
I received a free electronic ARC of this extremely engrossing novel from Netgalley, author Ash Davidson, and publisher Scribner. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am pleased to recommend Damnation Spring to friends and family. This is a debut novel to keep you up nights, a story that will wring your heart dry. Ash Davidson is an author I will follow. It begins in the summer of 1977 in Northern California, in a tiny company town. Rich Gundersen is the fourth generation of his family to work as a tree-topper for Sanderson Timber Company. He and his wife Colleen are raising their son Chub, now six years old, in Rich's family home, which is now the property of the park that has enfolded their section of the Redwood groves into a national park. They may have the use of that home for 25 years, or either of their lifetimes when ownership will convert to the park. Both Rich and Colleen want a much different life for their son Chub. Colleen has worked as an amateur midwife for several years, and she herself has had multiple miscarriages, the last stillborn near term at Easter. There are three known babies in the community born in the last several months with Anencephaly, or without a working brain. What a horrid thing to have to live with knowing. And how easy it is to blame yourself, for something you did wrong during your pregnancy. No mother would be immune to that fear. For decades the Sanderson company has used a helicopter to spread herbicides on their roads and the areas of the forest they are currently cutting. And for all those years, they have assured their employees and the townspeople that the spray they use is safe. Even if it does contain some of the same ingredients as does the known carcinogen Agent Orange. The Sandersons vehemently deny any wrongdoing, and the crews of timber men have no alternative source of income, they don't want to believe in the dangers involved with spreading the herbicide. As the summer wains, the town is infiltrated with protestors, considered by the townspeople to be hippies and freeloaders. Their protests are disrupting the work on the Redwood being cleared on property owned by the Sanderson family, and everyone is hopeful that they will be able to clear Damnation plots 1 and 2 before winter comes when the constant rain and fog will stop work for several months. The men need the hours and over time, the big checks of the fall that will see their families housed and fed through the wageless winter. But the press follows in the wake of the protesters, and the situation becomes very intense. With enough attention drawn to the problems, the government might get involved. Nobody, on either side of the problem, wants that. Or do they?
About the author
Ash Davidson was born in Arcata, California, and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts and MacDowell. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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