Damnation Spring

Started with the expectation of the book being climate fiction as it was described in the synopsis. The premise sounded good but it's a slog! Tedious, irritating and repetitive. Got full technical information on lumber business and timber. Couldn't believe that the main character was so idiotic as to not realise the connection between birth anomalies, miscarriages and spraying of pesticides. Takes more than half the book for the story to move forward and even then it dithers. Everyone is walking around with nosebleeds but find it normal. Came to know somewhere near the end that redwood trees are called "pumpkins". The conversations between the main character and her child are the most irritating. The descriptions of the forests and the animal- human interactions were the only things I found beautiful. But that's not enough to save this boring book. I've never written such harsh words but after spending money and time, with rave reviews by well known critics this feels like a promoted book.

The set-up for this story is a good one. Rich Gundersen has logging in his blood and spots an opportunity to preserve his way of life, and win his family extra security, by investing all their savings in acres of ancient redwood – but he doesn’t discuss it with his wife first. He and Colleen have one healthy child, but the return into her orbit of a former boyfriend, now an environmental scientist, leads her to wonder about a link between the numerous miscarriages she and neighbours have experienced and the chemical spray used by the company that employs her husband to suppress the brushwood that restricts access to the ‘big pumpkins’ they want to chop. She starts to help her ex gather evidence – but doesn’t get round to mentioning it to Rich. This is a beautiful book in so many ways, empathetic and well-written. Ash Davidson says it’s a story not about logging so much as herbicides (her ‘day job’ is in conservation). But it’s also a touching and wholly convincing portrait of a rock-steady marriage being eroded not just by private secrets but by commercial greed and outside forces. Where ‘Damnation Spring’ also scores is in the way it avoids a simple nature versus business confrontation by showing how intertwined are the daily lives of the working community in this part of Northern California and the policy issues surrounding the preservation of natural assets. The book does labour in places; there are clunky repetitions and in my view 40 pages or so could have been profitably lopped. Davidson took a decade to write it and may have outlasted her editors. For all that, the book’s heart is firmly in the right place without simplifying what is complex or coming across as preachy.

Although environmental stories are not my usual reads, I was intrigued by the premise from the opposite perspective. Instead of focusing on the “tree huggers” (which was the focus of my last environmental book), this one focuses on the working class loggers in the 1970s. Rich has been cutting down redwood trees as long as he can remember. Almost 50 now and after his younger wife’s miscarriage, he makes the decision to use their life savings to buy a huge section of land with the intention to profit off the cut redwoods. Unknown to him, his wife, Colleen, begins to question whether her miscarriage (and the seven previous ones which she kept a secret) were caused by the sprays used to keep the land free of weeds. Working in secret with her ex boyfriend, she begins to wonder whether the nose bleeds, cancers, and deaths are worth it trade off for the income Rich gets. The story is also told through Chub’s perspective. As their only kid, his chapters showcase his innocence in what’s going on around him. The synopsis that I provided should have really set the background for the story, but instead this plot lasted for over 70% of the novel. Every plot point that I mentioned kept getting repeated and it seemed that there was no escalation. You may be asking me what then was happening for majority of the book? Well, we really meet a lot of random and pretty asshole-ish characters. By a LOT, it honestly felt like every chapter a new character was interjected. I didn’t use the word introduced, because no introduction was ever given. They would just appear using logger jargon. Their whole family was also mentioned as if we should know who they are in relation to Rich or Colleen. I honestly wouldn’t be able to describe the other characters no matter how hard I tried (and trying to find them in the book would be impossible). There was also a weird focus on some storylines. Rich’s toothache was mentioned so many times for absolutely no reason. We’re given background on his previous dentist. We’re told the life story of the current dentist he refuses to see. We get a random chapter of him going to the dentist. It makes no sense. Additionally, there was a skull found very early on but I don’t think there was ever any conclusion to who that was or what happened. Overall, maybe the last 10% of this book actually felt like something was going on. I still don’t completely understand what’s happening with the land in the end (but I can’t say I ever knew what was going on with it). I might have set too high expectations for this and ultimately had to really push myself to read to the very end.

I can't say enough good things about this novel. It is just gorgeously written, and examines issues concerning human interactions with the natural world that are both very timely and also timeless. The characters are lovingly wrought, and readers are required, in the most tender way possible, to acknowledge the humanity in all of them. Put this book on the top of your reading pile!

Let the story build and thank me later. Exceptionally written and cannot recommend it more highly!