GOOD READS

Fiction is not a genre we typically review in The Real Dirt, but we’ve made an exception for this late fall issue. Curl up fireside with a cuppa hot cocoa, a big warm blanket, and your favorite furry friend, and get lost in the pages of Damnation Spring. Author Ash Davidson grew up in Arcata, California, just south of the redwood forests she writes about. Damnation Spring, heralded as both an American classic and the next Great American Novel, is thematically an outdoorsy adventure novel and an engrossing work of climate fiction, starring the hard-scrabble logging communities of the Pacific Northwest. In this gripping dose of nature vs. man storytelling, you’ll be sure to be captivated by Damnation Spring’s characters and sad to leave them behind.

Good Reads is compiled and written by TRD Assistant Editor Dawn Borgeest, Rochester Garden Club, Zone III

Ash Davidson Scribner, 464 pps. Environmental protection. Such a vital, yet esoteric and increasingly politicized concept for many. If you’re yearning to understand the humanity of these issues, you won’t want to miss Ash Davidson’s debut novel Damnation Spring (Scribner, 2021).

The book is set in the late 1970s in the Pacific Northwest, just as the environmental movement was gaining momentum. The story is told through the eyes of a multi-generational logger family, the Gundersons. Rich, a gentle and kind man, works doggedly as a logger to support his wife, Connie, and son, Chub (lovingly called Graham Cracker by his Mom and Dad).

Davidson masterfully transports you to the forests and immerses you in the gritty, grueling work of loggers. They live rugged lives. They know and love their work, work that generations of their families have known. It is, for most, the only way of life they have ever known. Yet, they know all too well the danger in bringing the mighty redwoods down. Most have lost loved ones to logging accidents. They tell their stories of loss like badges of honor, sharing their hard-won lessons with young loggers who come to learn the craft. There is an enormous sense of respect and pride in their work. And frustration. It’s a hard life. One that Rich does not want to pass on to yet another generation, least of all to his beloved son Chub.

Colleen Gunderson is a devoted wife and mother who stoically mourns multiple miscarriages that leave Chub an only child. Chub is a darling little boy whose innocence and spirit will charm you. You’ll also meet endearing characters like Lark, Rich’s surrogate father; Enid, Colleen’s rough and tumble younger sister; and, Eugene, Enid’s reckless and roughneck husband.

This is a complex and moving story of how this little logging town defends its way of life—the only way of life its ever known— while wrestling with the realities of a vanishing industry that is their livelihood. Could the herbicidal spray that rains down on the loggers (courtesy of the lumber companies) really be harmful? Is the water they tap from tributaries contaminated? Are the birth defects and miscarriages experienced testament to untold environmental damage?

The questions raised through this novel are timely and vital. But equally important, Davidson so evenhandedly shows the multiple dimensions and perspectives of these issues. Logging provides livelihoods for hundreds and quenches consumers’ thirst for lumber-reliant products. Yet the logging practices are damaging the environment and the very families who defend them.

Davidson brilliantly, and with great heart, weaves us through the humanity of these haunting questions and deftly raises urgency in what nature is telling us all.

Ash Davidson. Photos courtesy of Scribner