For generations, Rich Gundersen's family has made a living felling giant redwoods on California's rugged coast. It's treacherous work, and though his son, Chub, wants nothing more than to step into his father's boots, Rich longs for a bigger future for him.

Colleen just wants a brother or sister for Chub, but she's losing hope. There is so much that she and Rich don't talk about these days ­- including her suspicions that there is something very wrong at the heart of the forest on which their community is built.

When Rich is offered the opportunity to buy a plot of timber which borders Damnation Grove, he leaps at the chance - without telling Colleen. Soon the Gundersens find themselves on opposite sides of a battle that threatens to rip their town apart. Can they find a way to emerge from this together?
This is one of my favorite reading seasons because there is absolutely nothing better than curling up under a fuzzy blanket with a good book And this was a great read

Very slow to start but when you get to the part when it all starts moving, you understand the reason for the buildup and scene setting.

It's a very relevant book for today - the relationship between people and the environment. The novel is set in the redwood forests of California. People have logged trees here for years but now the gaps and damage are starting to show. Not to mention the chemical mess and pollution which is having an effect on people and the food chain.

This reminded me of the Erin Brokovich film where there's lots of detail about the degradation and company in charge but there's a real community and personal reason behind the story.

Unusual in tone and subject but well worth a read.

Although set in 1977, this remarkably accomplished debut novel is as relevant today as ever, and has been one of the highlights of my reading year. At its heart is the conflict between logging and the environment, set amongst the redwood forests of California. Generations of loggers have made their living by cutting down these magnificent trees and they hold their way of life dear. But now the consequent environmental degradation is becoming evident for all to see and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that herbicide and pesticide spraying is causing untold damage to humans too. A spate of birth defects, still births and miscarriages cannot be ignored by even the most entrenched partisan views. Economics versus health, capitalism and the multi-nationals versus the family – an all too familiar conflict. The book rings heartbreakingly true on every page, with every character, and with every piece of dialogue. Yes, there’s a lot of technical detail about the actual logging, but I even found that interesting. I found myself totally caught up in these people’s lives, and I appreciated the author managing not to judge, not to condemn, but to so brilliantly describe a whole community at one with and yet at odds with the environment. A really find piece of writing indeed.

Damnation Spring is an epic, immersive debut and the deeply human story of a Pacific Northwest logging town wrenched in two by a mystery that threatens to derail its way of life. 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 squirrelled 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. This is a captivating and thought-provoking story about the toll modern life has taken on the environment and features a clash between activists, big business and working-class loggers. It highlights just how capitalism has depleted natural resources with no care for the damage it may cause so long as it brings in the shekels. 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 and an impressive climate-centric read pitting ordinary families, their livelihoods, health and welfare against huge multinationals. Highly recommended.

Damnation Spring was painfully difficult to get into. I spent three days forcing myself through the first, excruciatingly slow one hundred pages. And then I read the rest of the book in one sitting because I simply couldn’t put it down.
Where did the author get the talent for this gorgeous writing style? If anyone finds the store where that is sold, do hit me up.
The story itself was as slow as the first hundred pages promised it would be. Those were so slow in particular because of the lengthy introduction into the setting and there was lots of logging terminology that I had to struggle through. Much of that was honestly quite lost on me and it’s unlikely that I would have pulled through had this not been an arc. But I did, and I am so grateful for it.
The premise is unlike anything I’ve ever read about. Everything takes place within the same logging town, but the scenery was described in such amazingly engrossing detail that I was looking forward to every glimpse into the forest. I felt like I was walking right there beside Chub, guided by his rhymes and hand map, and staring up at those old and immense redwoods.
What I adored even more than the setting, and what was developed even more beautifully as well, were the characters and their relationships. I’ve never felt as close to any group of characters in any book as I felt to the Gundersen family. The changing points of view between Chub, Rich and Colleen provided unique insights into their family dynamics and I liked the aspects that Chub’s perspective added to the story.
I liked the loyal, calm character of Rich who tried to find a way to protect his family’s health and secure their living, Colleen’s fierce belief in doing what is right and standing up for herself and her pain, and insightful and quiet Chub.
I passionately disliked Enid and Eugene, two of the most selfish and self-centered side characters I’ve ever encountered. However, theirs was a very central aspect of the struggle with the future of the logging business, and they added a lot to the story. Despite everything, there was still a lot of love between them and the Gundersens.
I could see the reasoning behind all the character’s actions, their pain and their challenges, and the loyalty most of them showed each other, and I believe this is what made this book so heartbreaking and impactful for me.
Although it had a rough start, this was a great debut and I’m looking forward to reading more of the author’s works in the future.

Spanning a single year from 1977-78, Ash Davidson’s Damnation Spring is tale of environmental despoilation set in a small Californian community where there’s little in the way of employment besides logging or the fish cannery, told through the story of a single family.

Rich Gunderson is a champion topclimber, married to Colleen with whom he has a son, Chub. Both Rich and Coll would love another child but Coll has suffered many miscarriages. Like his father, Rich has a cherished ambition to fell the 24/7, the vast redwood overlooking the forest he helps log for the Sanderson company, an ambition so irresistible he risks financial ruin to attain it. To collect his prize, Rich is relying on Sanderson’s plans to build a road for their final harvest. Before they do that, the undergrowth must be cleared. Helicopters spray overhead as they’ve done many times before. Marine biologist Daniel, researching the dire state of the Klamath River’s fish stocks, begins to make noises, inviting journalists to write about the babies born with appalling birth defects. By the end of the year, the community will be brought face to face with the full extent of the company’s scheming and its tragic consequences.

Davidson switches perspectives between Rich, Coll and Chub, an effective way of exploring the environmental devastation wrought on both landscape and people by a company which ruthlessly exploits both. It’s an immersive, all too believable story, heartrending at times. It reminded me a little of Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer although I have the same problem with Davidson’s novel as I did with Kingsolver’s: at well over 400 pages, it’s a tad too long for me.