Damnation Spring
Fiction
Scribner
August 3, 2021
Hardcover
464
Purchased
For generations, Rich Gundersen’s family has chopped a livelihood out of the redwood forest along California’s rugged coast. Now Rich and his wife, Colleen, are raising their own young son near Damnation Grove, a swath of ancient redwoods on which Rich’s employer, Sanderson Timber Co., plans to make a killing. In 1977, with most of the forest cleared or protected, a grove like Damnation—and beyond it 24-7 Ridge—is a logger’s dream.
It’s dangerous work. Rich has already lived decades longer than his father, killed on the job. Rich wants better for his son, Chub, so when the opportunity arises to buy 24-7 Ridge—costing them all the savings they’ve squirreled away for their growing family—he grabs it, unbeknownst to Colleen. Because the reality is their family isn’t growing; Colleen has lost several pregnancies. And she isn’t alone. As a midwife, Colleen has seen it with her own eyes.
For decades, the herbicides the logging company uses were considered harmless. But Colleen is no longer so sure. What if these miscarriages aren’t isolated strokes of bad luck? As mudslides take out clear-cut hillsides and salmon vanish from creeks, her search for answers threatens to unravel not just Rich’s plans for the 24-7, but their marriage too, dividing a town that lives and dies on timber along the way.
Told from the perspectives of Rich, Colleen, and Chub, in prose as clear as a spring-fed creek, this intimate, compassionate portrait of a community clinging to a vanishing way of life amid the perils of environmental degradation makes Damnation Spring an essential novel for our time.
This was not only a well written and engaging story, but one that sheds light on the growing environmental concerns we face. The use of regular pesticide sprayings, and the effects it has on this small logging town in 1977, is the main focus of the story. From the salmon, to the drinking water from the creeks, to the myriad numbers of birth issues, the welfare of these people becomes of grave importance to the reader. Add to the growing environmental issues, two sides form to argue over the spraying, and there is a lot of tension between neighbors, families, and friends. The loggers need the excess brush cleared in order to work, but there are those who want to know at what cost is this work to their community? There are definitely two sides to the story, and even though I knew which side I should take, the author skillfully makes you look at both sides and the effect on the town's economy. The story is told from three viewpoints, Rich (a logger), his wife Colleen (a midwife), and their son Chub. If I was going to nitpick the book at all I would say that I wasn't a fan of the son's chapters. I felt that they didn't really ring true for what a five year old would be observing or saying. I loved him as a character, just not as much as a narrator. I felt that despite sadness toward the end of the book, it overall left you with a hopeful feeling for the family. This is one of those books that you worry about what happened to the characters and how everything turned out.
A wonderful story about a small logging town dealing with the environmental effects of pesticides. I don't know much about the regulations placed on these chemicals today, but I certainly hope they are far removed from what was happening in 1977. Richly crafted characters, many of them deeply flawed, propel this story into one that will stay with you a while.
